“… we’re all terminal on this bus”

[Trigger warnings: terminal illness; death; loss.]

From Anne Lamott’s book Bird by bird [chapter Writer’s Block]: 

“

I remind myself nearly every day of something that a doctor told me six months before my friend Pammy died. This was a doctor who always gave me straight answers. When I called on this one particular night, I was hoping she could put a positive slant on some distressing developments. She couldn’t, but she said something that changed my life. “Watch her carefully right now”, she said, “because she’s teaching you how to live.”

I remind myself of this when I cannot get any work done: to live as if I am dying, because the truth is we are all terminal on this bus. To live as if we are dying gives us a chance to experience some real presence. Time is so full for people who are dying in a conscious way, full in the way that life is for children. They spend big round hours. So instead of staring miserably at the computer screen trying to will my way into having a breakthrough, I say to myself, “Okay, hmmmm, let’s see. Dying tomorrow. What should I do today?” Then I can decide to read Wallace Stevens for the rest of the morning or go to the beach or just really participate in ordinary life. Any of these will begin the process of filing me back up with observations, flavors, ideas, visions, memories. I might want to write on my last day on earth, but I’d also love to be aware of other options that would feel at least as pressing. I would want to keep whatever I did simple, I think. And I would want to be present.

“