March 20, 1994 2:00 AM, my sister died. Not yet 42, not yet a mother, wife, middle aged, or ready.
First, five years of feeling badly, physical pain, unacknowledged by the medical community, not sure if she was just crazy. Then, five years of battling the cancer she always knew she had, and finally, without choice or acquiescence, death.
Me? I’m angry, guilty, broken hearted. We didn’t say goodbye. We didn’t even talk about death. We didn’t know how. Where do you learn to let go, bring closure, find understanding? Not in our culture. Not in this great modern western era. There is no death for us, just the disappearance, sudden or slow, of people and pets out of our lives. No explanations, no hope, just business as usual.
But, somehow, in my pain, and ignorance and hopelessness, there were new beginnings. I reached a point in my life where I stopped, and refused to continue on in the same old routine of loss and pain. I decided to start a quest that would either bring me hope and knowledge and inspiration, or allow me to give up. No more surviving, now it would have to be understanding.
How many times had I heard, “Seek and ye shall find”, or “when the student is ready the teacher will appear”. And for how long had I thought of this as folktale from the ignorant past. And for how long had I lived without a sustaining belief in anything; without dedication to a purpose. I was surviving on empty.
But as I sought, I found. And at every question, a source appeared. And suddenly, I was meeting so many other seekers. Where had they all been before? How could I miss so much?
So now, March 20th, 2001: how much I have changed? Seven years of reading, reading, reading; and attending so many wonderful seminars. I now know a whole new language. The language of hope, the language that lets me discuss loss and dying as a part of life, as times of transition. Taking the long view, the view that scans eternity.
B’Shert Integrative Oncology Services is the expression of my hope and my mission. Bringing together people who are saying goodbye to their feelings of safety, to their physical strength, and perhaps to their life, family and friends. Exploring as a group what it means to be living, what it means to be dying, what it means to be.
Our Odyssey program and In Practice Program are created to provide information, skills and opportunities for sharing as each of us journeys through our present. Living alone, grieving alone, dying alone, all the while surrounded by others, is the experience of too many. Make a choice to connect and explore. Join the adventure called BIOS.