If more of us thought about our mortality beyond the usual binary of “Am I going to heaven or hell?”—maybe we’d live differently. Maybe we’d put down the picket signs, metaphorically speaking. Maybe we’d take a hard look at the direction hate is heading. We should stand up to stop it. Doing so is not because we’re part of some group or movement. It’s because it’s the right thing to do.
What if life wasn’t a test of righteousness, but a challenge to our capacity for love? What if our very existence was a dare? We must live intentionally. We must matter. We should show up as a positive force regardless of our theology or lack of it.
Since my myeloma diagnosis, that’s how I’ve tried to live. Like I’ve been dared. Like the odds are stacked against me, and I’m choosing to show up anyway.
If we saw death as a finish line, we spend all our energy looking ahead. We would have elbows out, trying to outpace everyone else in the race. But what if we slowed down? What if we questioned the direction of the road we’re running on? Does it lead where our hearts want to go, or just where we’ve been told it ends?
Pardon the tangent. My mind wanders in metaphors.
I recently read Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. It was written in the same year as my spiritual awakening—1994. The content felt uncannily familiar. It echoed thoughts I’d scrawled into journals all those years ago. It was easy to read, not because it was light, but because it resonated. It reminded me that faith doesn’t always come from a pulpit or fit into a pew. Sometimes, it whispers in the middle of the night, or floods your chest when you need it most.
Books like that—spiritual, philosophical, honest—comfort people like me. People have had those “conversations” for years. They often chalked them up to chemo, trauma, or just being a little crazy. But maybe it wasn’t crazy at all. Maybe it was sacred.
I’ve been in the room with the dying—more times than most. More than thirty people, some leaving this world, some already gone. And here’s what I know: a body with a soul and a body without one are entirely different things. Once the soul departs, the body is… just matter. There’s a peace in that. Like childbirth in reverse—trauma, yes, but also transformation.
I believe the people we love never really leave us. They live in everything and everyone they’ve touched. They stay—if not physically, then spiritually. Their imprint is eternal.
Neuroscience tells us that when we clear out old memories, we make room for the ones that matter most. I like that idea. Because when someone we love is gone, those good memories become sacred spaces. And if we’re open, if we have the faith to listen—there is a comfort that wraps around us. A warmth that reminds us: you are not alone.
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