the Listening Project
Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 10:31AM My last project was a big one: NOT DYING. Breast cancer articles sing the praises of early detection, and with the number of women dropping like so many leaves from our family tree, I knew to keep a close watch. But it wasn't enough. When I was diagnosed, the words that jangled over and over in my head were late-stage, late-stage, late-stage.
So I did the one thing I could do: I kept breathing. I breathed in Peace, and breathed out Love, as best I could. And it calmed me.
Something about your Death waving like a visiting Auntie who'd just LOVE to take you home has you dig in your heels and say, I like it where I am JUST FINE thank you. Then I made a plan I called the Staying Here Project.
For a year, my days were about managing the side effects of 15 rounds of chemo, recovering from three surgeries, and remembering to love this whole crazy world. I kept doing that until my scans were clean, clean, clean. And then I did it some more.
When I complete a project I usually experience a letdown at the end. In seventh grade, when the community theatre production of My Very First Musical Ever ended, it took the whole summer to reclaim my mojo. But this time, I went from the Staying Here Project directly into my next: the Listening Project.
This project, surprisingly, is much more difficult: to live in the clickety-clackety rhythm of everyday life, with an ear tuned to the eternal hum of everything underneath. To remember to listen to that sound, no matter what, for the comfort it brings.
When I listen that way, when WE listen that way, we hear all sorts of wonderful things: words and melodies and ideas that we might otherwise miss. We hear each other.
So I'm practicing my listening, and even writing down some of what I hear, because I like the idea that someday--hopefully long from now--when I do leave, my words can stay. Who knows? Perhaps some sweet great-grandchild will come to know the love that was already in the world for her, so many years before she was born.
Reader Comments (2)
Ooooo...many kudos to you for the success of your Last Project!!!
I'm sure the Listening Project will be a rousing success, too!
This one brought tears to my eyes. My lovely mom passed away in 2005. I asked her several times to write her story. She wrote beautifully and was an amazing woman. She never did. My thought was always that her 10 grandchildren who lived all over the country didn't really know her and that there were still more grandchildren to come that would know nothing of her in her own words. So my siblings and I have all written about her - she is one of the reasons I started my blog. But we only know her through our eyes. I wish she had let us see her through her own.