TheraP--I am really honored! I've had over 1,100 hits on that post since Tuesday. That's pretty amazing!

The only post I've ever done that surpassed it was my post about my friend Terri-Lynn, whose untimely death is what got me so energized about healthcare reform to begin with.

By publicizing this so beautifully, you are helping me to honor her memory. And for that, I am truly grateful.

Pax,
Doxy

Elegy

She was beautiful. Big brown eyes and a veritable mane of dark brown, unruly hair. A crooked tooth gave her a interesting smile.

She was sarcastic and wry. I was always glad that I wasn't the subject of her witheringly funny scrutiny. She could cut through bullshit in about two seconds flat. You never wondered what she thought about anything--she was always happy to tell you.

She grew up in a beach town and she was in love with the ocean. Her blog carried a quote from Isak Dinesen: "The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea." She knew something about tears--and she knew how to laugh, too.

She was fiercely loyal to her friends, including me. And she was loving--to her son, to her family and friends, and even to a few people who didn't deserve it.

She exemplified Jesus about as well as anyone I've ever known. She gave up on organized religion after her young son was diagnosed with a chronic illness and the faith community in which he was baptized at sunrise on an Easter morning never called to see how he was or visited him in the hospital. I can't say I blame her for that--in fact, it grieves me in a special way, because those apathetic folks were "my people"--Episcopalians. But she walked the walk a hell of a lot better than most people who just like to tell you about their love for Jesus.

She never caught a break. She never went to college. Never really had much in the way of a career--certainly not something with benefits. Her one great love broke her heart when he left their marriage. Late in life, she had the son she loved above all with a man who didn't deserve either of them.

She was a loving, good woman, friend, and mother, and she never caught a break.

*********************************

She died of cancer yesterday (e.g. 5/25/09). She died at age 50, leaving that 10-year-old boy with the chronic illness without her fierce love and protection. God only knows what his life will be like now.

She died because she was poor, and because she didn't have health insurance.

She died because, when she started having pain and other symptoms almost five years ago, she didn't go to the doctor because she couldn't afford it. What might have been easily curable had it been caught early was a death sentence by the time she was no longer able to bear the pain and dragged herself to the emergency room.

She died because the people in this country are so fucking selfish that they have fought healthcare reform tooth and nail.

She died because she didn't have the good fortune to be born in a country that doesn't CLAIM to be "Christian"--like any developed nation in Europe or the United Kingdom. (Where my mother, who suffers from chronic health problems, has received the best healthcare she's ever gotten...so spare me your ignorant diatribes about the National Health Service in the U.K.)

My friend spent her last years suffering not only the pain of cancer but the indignity of having to worry about how she was going to pay her rent and feed her child. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer 2½ years ago, and was able to get Social Security disability payments only nine weeks ago.

It sickens me to type that.

If you are one of those people who believes that universal healthcare is a socialist plot and has fought reform that would enable every American to have decent healthcare, I hold you personally responsible for her death. You are complicit in murder, and you should fall to your knees and beg God's forgiveness for your selfishness and your hardness of heart.

If it were in my power, I would force you to look that 10-year-old boy in the face and explain to him why it is okay that his mother is dead so that you could have a few more dollars in your pocket for your Starbucks lattes or your cable television service. Or why it it was okay for you to keep your "Cadillac healthcare plan" while his mother had none.

If you could do that, you are beyond help and may God have mercy on your soul--for you will get none from me.

If you could do that, I hope that you at least have the grace not to call yourself a Christian.

And if you couldn't--if you couldn't look that sweet boy in the face and say something so hardened and callous that it would make the angels weep--you need to be on the phone to your elected representatives, telling them to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Demanding that they make changes--no matter what the cost--so that no person on this earth will die in agony, and no child will be left motherless, because we don't have the will to do the most basic thing that Jesus asked of us: "Love one another."

**********************************************************

This is what my friend, Terri-Lynn--funny, loyal, loving woman that she was--wrote about herself (scroll down at Doxy's blog).

"There are places in the heart that do not yet exist; suffering has to enter in for them to come to be".

Leon Bloy

The Mystery of Suffering

It was Thanksgiving Day. But nobody knew that there. We'd gone to visit my father-in-law because he was gravely ill. He had already gathered his children (all grown) and tearfully asked for their forgiveness - for any wrong he had done them. That was before our trip could be made. I'm sorry we missed it.

My mother-in-law was a saint. And I'm not kidding you when I say that. When she died, some years after her husband, the whole village turned out. The priest spoke of how he had learned so much from her. She was a benefactor and a friend to many. Always quietly, discreetly.

I had asked her for prayers many times. Especially for my work with victims of abuse. I had asked many people actually. Even strangers. Leaving little notes on bulletin boards (the kind where you could leave such a message): "Please pray for victims of abuse and for their therapists." I'm not kidding you.

Was I the one who wanted to ask the Carmelites to pray too? The tiny convent of aging nuns in this obscure village in Andalusia? Friends and recipients of my mother-in-law's kindness and financial assistance. I can't recall who proposed it.

But on that Thanksgiving morning we walked through the narrow streets to the Carmelite convent. My husband. His mother. And I. Through the closed gate. Under the stone arch. Through the wooden doors. Down a short hallway. Into a tiny room with a grille, which looked into another tiny room. Where, after a short wait, two nuns appeared. Women who had been here for decades, I'm sure. Women with little more than a grammar school education, who'd been in this enclosed environment, gradually turning into saints.

I expected my husband or his mother to do the talking. But no.... They turned to me. Everyone was waiting. The two nuns behind the grille. The three of us, on tiny chairs, crowded together on our side of that little grilled window. And in my broken Spanish I briefly told them of my work. Asked them to pray especially for one person. Made up words to convey that she'd been abused, even tortured as a child. That her own mother had participated in this, earning money from her daughter's suffering. That, for her, this defined her worth. At which point I burst into tears and could say no more.

The one nun began speaking. In Spanish. An elderly woman hidden except for her kind face poking through her veil and plain brown robe. I could hardly understand a word. It seemed she spoke at length. And I tried to be polite and pay attention to the stream of words, picking out phrases like " the Big Teresa" and "the Little Teresa" (the foundress of the order and someone also known as "the little flower"). Both had suffered in different ways - and I presume the old nun might have referred to that - but honestly her words were not making much headway. Until she said: "Pedir a Dios para la fe de aceptar el misterio del sufrimiento." She might have repeated them. She must have seen from my expression that they went straight to my heart. That she'd given me what I needed: "Pray to God - for the faith - to accept the mystery of suffering."

Maybe it was something she had learned from the "Big Teresa" and the "Little Teresa". Maybe it was something she had gathered on her own. I will never know. She also gave me some momentoes of these saints - a keychain, a little triptiche. But mostly she gave me those words. I repeat them sometimes. I love the sound of them in Spanish. I can feel her presence, almost, as I say them.

I've followed her advice. I have to say I think it's helped.

When someone suffers, it is their suffering. It belongs to them. No one can take it from them. If they let you in, together you can sit before it - or with it - patient, reverent, accepting, caring, letting it seep into your heart and soul.

There are words you can say. But mostly I think it all comes down to presence.

Suffering is a mystery. And so is presence. I think they complement each other - in some way that is also a mystery.

Healthcare for All!