In 2016 my best friend died of cancer. I sat at her bedside a few weeks before and said, "Mich, this is not how I thought the story would end." She pressed my hand, answering, "Neither did I?" A few weeks later she was gone. This loss has turned me upside down and inside out. Not just the loss of my lifelong friend and soulmate-sister but the overwhelming groundlessness accompanying her loss. Suddenly nothing made sense. All my belief structures and conceptual models simply collapsed. The only statement I could make with any real conviction was, "I don't know". With that there was little left to say. Little to write. Little to create. I gave away my loom, my paints, my art boards and supplies. My well of creativity just ran dry, replaced by an edge of cynicism and apathy.
What would my sister tell me to do?
I didn't know. She was gone. I couldn't pick up the phone and hear the reassurance of her voice or lean into her arms for comfort or turn toward her honesty for truth. To say "I miss her" doesn't begin to approach this loss. It would be more honest to say, "I miss myself".
In our world today, we rarely approach genuine loss and the ungraceful feelings of being human, with candor and honesty. Instead we present botoxed, photoshopped, smiling images accompanied by upbeat quips about life going our way. I've tried that, for a millisecond. It's like surviving with nothing to eat but rice cakes- bland, tasteless and beyond boring. My sister met the rawness of the human experience and it's wide horizon of feeling with a warm welcome. She wasn't afraid to greet your messiness. She was as interested in your shadow as in your light. I have rarely found her like.
Her open hearted acceptance didn't stand for bullshit. Hell no. She exuded an inner strength and would tell you how she saw it with a warmth and camaraderie that left you empowered rather than shamed. In her absence, I see more clearly what is lost when we shy away from human complexity in favor of our best face, mine or yours. We miss the depth available in the human experience and the gift of authentic connection. Of course life sometimes hurts like hell. It is also unspeakably beautiful and undeniably amazing. Trying to have one without the other is a pipe dream unworthy of us.
Since her death I have been living my life in tiny sips. Perhaps that is what grief looks like sometimes. Michelle would tell me it's time to turn toward the banquet instead of the rice cake. She would have counseled guzzling life rather than sipping it. She would have asked me to feel, even though it hurts, and write because that's what I do. She would have reminded me that such feeling involves great courage and that courage implies vulnerability.
After the longest writer's block in my life, this post is my birthday gift to her.
Michelle Lawhorn would have been 59 on February 28th. I love you sister-sister.
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