Why Miss the Moment?

by | Jul 21, 2012

It’s never too late to start. It’s never too early to begin.

View of the Valley © 2011 Lucy Mathews Heegaard
One of my closest friends is living with terminal cancer. I selected the verb very consciously here, and “living” is exactly what I mean. As we talked the other day about the latest developments in her treatment plan, she said, “I no longer look at this as a journey or a battle. I am simply living my life.”

My friendship with Elizabeth has been a long and beautiful dance of conversation, back and forth, between the two of us. We both love words. We choose them carefully and aren’t afraid to use them to the fullest extent needed. But we don’t toss them around lightly, either. In high school, my parents used to say that we talked so fast they could hardly understand us. We’ve never been at a loss for things to say to one another. Yet, we are also very comfortable sharing silence.

Early on, we dubbed our most cherished conversations as “1:00 a.m. chats,” named after the hour at which we seemed to get to the root of whatever story, fear, hope or secret most needed sharing. Over our 31 years of friendship, I couldn’t even begin to guess how many of these chats we’ve had.

We live 1,424 miles apart now (yes, I checked on google maps), making our face to face conversations far less frequent than in our younger years when we were just down the road from one another. We do visit periodically, but in the interim we are adept at substituting phone and text messages to keep our conversation ever present. When Elizabeth learned last year that her cancer had metastasized, those texts and phone calls began to feel like a life line. We have chatted during blood transfusions and chemo. We have texted during pedicures and our kids’ sporting events.

Not too long ago, we met in Northern California for a weekend away together. The small house we rented had a lovely deck with a hot tub overlooking a beautiful olive orchard. Each night after dinner, we sat in the hot tub watching the moon rise and talking. On our last night, we turned on a digital recorder and let it run as we talked. Back and forth, with candor and laughter, we narrated the story of how we met— the history of our friendship— for our kids, we said, but in truth mostly for ourselves.

Meandering, as we always do, to wherever the conversation leads us, Elizabeth began to tell me of a recent morning when her husband was getting up before sunrise to hike a trail in the Blue Hills near their home in Massachusetts. Tired, she was just about to wish him a happy hike when she changed her mind and decided to join him. She told me the sunrise had been gorgeous that morning and the moment with her husband at the trail’s summit an irreplaceable memory now, both for her and for him. She looked at me incredulously and said, “Why did I even think twice before deciding to go? Why would I want to miss that moment?”

In the dance of conversation, Elizabeth had unearthed an important question, and we both knew it. Why miss the moment? We actually repeated it several times as we sat in the hot tub, as if imprinting it on our brains. After all, it’s not easy to break habits of routine or responsibility. So we said it to one another almost like a chant: “Why miss the moment? Why miss the moment?” Under the full moon and star-filled sky, everything seemed so obvious and clear.

It’s never too late to start; it’s never too early to begin. So why miss the moment?

PHOTOGRAPHS | View of the Valley © 2012 LUCY MATHEWS HEEGAARD; LUCY AND ELIZABETH HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION DAY © 1982 Personal Photo Archives; Elizabeth and Lucy ©2011 Lucy Mathews Heegaard.

One True Step: A Breast Cancer Journey

by | Feb 10, 2011

In 2002, one of my dearest friends was diagnosed with breast cancer. In her late thirties, with a wonderful spouse and two young sons, I watched as she navigated surgery, chemo and radiation, as so many women do. Beyond the grueling aspects of treatment itself, there was the enormous heart space to travel: How do you talk to your kids about having cancer? How do you maintain your closest relationships when you are going through something most of those around you can’t understand first-hand? Bigger, yet, how do you face your own mortality?

My friend and I live more than 1,000 miles apart.  When you’re that far away, you can’t pitch in to do the things that are most tangible– picking up the kids from school, running errands, making dinners.  Yet, I desperately wanted to give her my support and love.  So I went to the archive of our past history together– old letters I had saved from our decades of friendship, beginning in high school, spanning through college and our early years in the work world, to getting married and having children.

Each week, I sent her a package containing one year’s worth of her letters to me, beginning in 1980 and ending in 2000. I marveled that we had traded letters in every single one of those years. I was awestruck by the depth of what we shared with one another. I lamented the fact that we slowly stopped writing real letters with the advent of email and arrival of our children. I copied each letter (no, i didn’t part with the originals!) and wrote commentaries in the margins about our escapades. I laughed and cried as I revisited memories and hoped that they would be a good distraction for her after each weekly chemo treatment.

My tiny window into her world during that year made a huge impression on me. Since then, so many more of my friends have been diagnosed. Gradually, I have become more and more involved in the cause to help find a cure for breast cancer and support women going through it.

I always knew that someday I wanted to tell the story I had witnessed.  Yet, often, the stories that are closest to our heart are the most difficult to express. It wasn’t until I saw a neighbor of mine– newly diagnosed and on a walk after chemo– that the words to this story came tumbling out. Though it is written specifically about women and breast cancer, the message applies to any major life challenge. Every picture and every journal entry is from a woman who has been through it. More than 30 women shared their private moments and thoughts to offer comfort to those currently on the path. . . one step, one true step, at a time.

Hindsight: Why Stories Matter

by | Feb 8, 2011

Don’t we all wish we had the 20-20 vision of hindsight in the moment an event is unfolding? We would have all the insight that retrospection brings, without having to wait. I used to believe that if we thought hard enough, studied and scrutinized long enough, then we could do all the right things, take the shortest route, make no mistakes. Of course, life doesn’t work that way.  And if we believe in that fallacy, then we’ll spend lots more time feeling we’ve failed than feeling we’ve succeeded.

In truth, hindsight can only come with time and reflection. Often, it’s only by looking back with the perspective of distance that we can see the turns we missed, or the steps that could have made life easier, or the ones we took that were right on the money, even though we made them without fully knowing which direction was best. Perhaps that’s the point, after all– that we cannot know everything. We can only do the best we can in each moment. It’s not about being perfect but about learning.

Maybe the real purpose of hindsight is to help us make sense of what we’ve been through, to sort through the messy details of the ups and downs and turn them into a story with a beginning, middle and end. And, ultimately– if we are willing– to offer our story to someone else.  Because in sharing our own story we can help others feel less alone, more connected, more empowered or simply comforted in the midst of their own moments of not knowing. In return, we might be lucky enough to have someone else’s story reach us at the moment we need it most.

We all have wisdom to share, usually more than we realize. Start telling your story. Trust me, it matters.