I can’t remember the last time I missed a minute of the Super Bowl, but here I am on this particularly freezing second Sunday in February, in bumper to bumper traffic, with my heat blasting and seat heaters on full, looking for a place to park instead of sitting in front of my TV, warm. 

Kick-off happened a few blocks back. I feel like I should care but I don’t. And it’s not because I’ve seen—we’ve all seen—this Super Bowl before: the New England Patriots vs. the Seattle Seahawks. I don’t care because tomorrow I’m having surgery. My first surgery. My first surgery ever and they’re going to take one of my breasts. 

Finally, I find a parking spot. I squeeze in, turn off the engine, pull on my hat and gloves, step out of the car, and start to walk—many people passing me, leaving the church, heading out as I’m heading in. 

Fuck the Patriots, I think. If something were to happen to me tomorrow, I don’t want the last thing I see to be the New England fucking Patriots winning another Super Bowl.

I arrive at the church. A large crowd is still gathered outside. Over their heads I see a few lights illuminating a small stage. Some speakers, imperfectly amplifying the voices I’ve come to hear. 

When the voices stop, an attendee steps up to the mic. They ask, “Is there a healing prayer? For the sick? Or for those who’ve passed?” 

It seems I’ve made it just in time.

I hear a voice, one of the monks’ voices, respond:

There is no healing prayer—no healing prayer for the sick, or for those who have passed.

Please don’t let me pass, I think.

“If they have passed, they have passed. You must move forward. You must live with what is.” He continues, “These are sorrow-thoughts. The sorrow-mind is a suffering mind. To honor those who have passed, you must live better.”

I close my eyes. I nuzzle my nose into my scarf and breathe in.

I will not pass, I think. I will live better.

The event ends and I let the gentle push of the crowd guide me forward until I come face to face with a monk dressed in an orange robe—one of the monks, here, on the eve of the final stop of their journey, the Walk for Peace, the night before my first surgery.

I extend my hand. In it he places a peace bracelet. I bow my head. He bows his.

I look at the bracelet. It’s simple. Green. Hand knotted. I put it in my pocket and leave.

I will take this bracelet with me to surgery the next day and to each chemo cycle that follows.

—

The next morning I wake up and check my phone. A message, from him: “I’m sure you’re asleep. But before you go in I wanted to say you’ve got this. I’ll be here on the other side more than ever.” 

I smile. My heart flutters. This is exactly what I want to hear.

At the same time my insides whisper, I don’t believe you.

And still my heart twists into a deep longing.

You’re married…

I place my phone down and think, please let this time be different.

I head into my bathroom and stand in front of the mirror. I meet my own eyes. I see the rim around their blue. The arch of my cheekbones. The fullness of my lips. My collarbones.

I see the muscle definition in my shoulders, my abdominals. Stronger than I ever have been.

He was right, that time before.

I am absolutely incredibly beautiful.

I reach up to part my thick blonde hair in two. I slide a brush through the long strands. I set the brush down and separate one of the sides into three sections. I begin to braid. I haven’t done this in decades. 

“Go into surgery with your hair braided,” I was told. “You won’t be able to reach overhead to wash or brush your hair for weeks.”

I secure an elastic band around the bottom of the braid and work on the other side.

When I’m done I stare at myself in the mirror. 

I unbutton my top and let it fall to the floor. 

I reach for my phone and take a picture of my breasts. 

They will never look like this again.

In a few hours, my body will be destroyed in an effort to keep me alive. 

—

I wake up in a yurt an hour west of Bozeman, MT, red-eyed and puffy-faced. I stare up at the domed ceiling. 

My first thought of the day: I am alone.

Tears start to fall. 

Again. 

This time, crying before coffee.

Never a good start.

I feel my tears slide down my cheeks and slip into my ears. I wipe them away with the back of my hand.

No part of me wants to get out of this bed. 

There’s a private claw-footed tub just outside the door to this yurt, fed by hot springs. I had spent hours in it the night before. It was warm. Beautiful. I stared at the mountains. 

It was idyllic.

And then I looked at Instagram.

Pictures of him with his family. 

His kids.

His wife.

On a vacation somewhere back east.

And suddenly, that’s where I wanted to be.

Back east. On that vacation. With those kids. And him. 

Part of a unit. Part of a family.

But instead, I am here. Alone in a tub fed by hot springs, outside a yurt, off a highway west of Bozeman, MT. And no one is coming to save me. 

And the tears came.

And didn’t stop for hours.

I finally sit up in bed and reach for my phone. I text My Unlikely Friend and tell him about the tub and the tears and the aloneness. I tell him I’m headed to Glacier National Park. I tell him I’m sure it will be nothing short of painfully spiritual.

He texts me, “Keep digging. “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” -Joseph Campbell.”

I don’t want to look anywhere near this cave.

Because I’m afraid in this cave is a question I don’t want to look at:

Why didn’t I start a family of my own?

I will stand at the mouth of this cave a few times later that fall. 

The cave will come to me in meditations, during breathwork. It will come to me when I walk my dog past the school bus stop and see mothers with their children.  

I will never know that kind of love, I will think. 

I will be forced to enter the cave that winter when I’m diagnosed with cancer—two cancers.

I will be repeatedly asked by my medical providers, do you have a husband? Do you have kids? 

I will be told my treatments will adversely affect my fertility. I will be asked if I want to breastfeed, if I’ve ever carried a child.

In the dark minutes and hours of treatment, alone, I’d stare into the cave and wonder:

What am I living for?

If not a husband.

If not children.

If not the future I thought I would have.

I will feel loneliness on a level that far surpasses anything I felt in the tub, outside that yurt, an hour west of Bozeman, MT.

But that morning, after the tears-before-coffee, the text, and one last dip in the tub, I pack my bag and keep going—headed toward Glacier National Park, making one stop along the way:

The Garden of 1,000 Buddhas.

—

I turn off the highway and pull up to the Garden, its location marked by an ornate Tibetan gateway adorned with paintings of deities. 

A small sign directs me to the parking lot. I turn and drive down a small gravel road, the only sound the gentle rumble of my tires over the small rocks. I put the car in park and sit and stare out the windshield before moving. My eyes, red and swollen, look out across the valley.

The surrounding land is flat, expansive, hugged by rolling mountains. To one side, the sun shines and whispy white clouds hang in the sky. To the other, the clouds adjoin in a gentle overcast.  

I get out of my car and walk towards the entrance. There are two boulders set alongside the walking path, each carved with a quote from Buddha. I stop at the first, take a picture of it, and send it to My Unlikely Friend. 

“For you,” I write.

I turn towards the second. I take a picture of it. 

For me, I think.

Just beyond the boulders, the garden unfolds in the shape of an eight-spoked Dharma wheel. At its center sits a twenty-four-foot statue of the Great Mother of Transcendent Wisdom. Around her, creating the circle of the wheel and its eight spokes—representing the Buddhist Eightfold Path to enlightenment—sit one thousand white Buddhas, their faces turned outwards towards the world—towards me—all with the same gentle expression. 

Wildflowers bloom in the spaces between the gravel path and the end of the spokes.

I start my walk, counterclockwise. I see statue after statue after statue as the sun shines down on my skin. I hear the gentle crunch of my feet as they walk along the gravel, the sound of my own breath.

Off to the side is a large hill. On top of the hill is a conical canopy of Buddhist prayer flags.

I step off the gravel path and walk up the hill, into the center of the flags. I look up.

The flags flap and snap in the wind, edges tattered from years in the sun and snow. Their colors—blue, white, red, green, and yellow—catch the sun as they move and dance in the wind. Printed with prayers and mantras and sacred texts, it is said the flags release peace, compassion, strength, and wisdom to all beings that encounter them.

I stay for several minutes, my face tipped up, the sun on my skin, the sound of the flags filling the silence around me.

I open my eyes and, through the dancing flags, look down at the wheel, across the valley, to the mountains hugging its edges, to the half-sun, half-cloud-filled sky.

Eventually I walk down the hill and continue around the wheel.

At the end, I walk towards its center. I pause in front of the large statue—the Great Mother of Transcendent Wisdom. Her colors—blue, red, teal, and gold—shine brightly in the early afternoon sun.

I sit on a bench and watch. This time, nothing moves. Silence. Stillness.

Then, a thought arrives.

I wonder if my sole purpose in life is to give and receive love.

—

I wake up the morning of my second breast surgery.

There is no text from him. 

There is no, I’ll be here on the other side more than ever.
No, I’m here to help.
No, Anything you need, no questions asked.
No, You’re my best friend, lady.

It’s been over three months since I’ve heard from him.

I was right.
But I wish I was wrong.

I head into my bathroom and stand in front of the mirror. I meet my own eyes. I see the rim around their blue. The arch of my cheekbones. The fullness of my lips. 

You are absolutely incredibly beautiful echoes in my head.

I see my collarbones, this time with the tube from my port sliding up over the bone and ending in my vein.

I do not see any muscle definition in my shoulders or my abdominals.

But I know, even though it feels like breaking, I am stronger than I’ve ever been before.

A different kind of strong.
A different kind of beautiful.

I reach up and part my blonde hair in two. There’s far less than there was the first time.

I slide a brush through the long strands and watch as dozens fall into my sink, onto the floor.

I kept it long despite my haircut the week before. 

“I want to keep it long, in protest,” I told my stylist, “I don’t want this thing to take more than it already has.” 

I set the brush down and separate one side of my hair into three sections. I begin to braid. 

I secure an elastic band around the bottom of the braid and work on the other side.

When I’m done I stare at myself in the mirror. 

Here we are again. 

But this time is not my first time.

I tell myself: This isn’t like the surgery where they tore you apart.

This is the surgery where they start to put you back together again.

I unbutton my top and let it fall to the floor. 

I reach for my phone and take a picture of my breasts—one natural, one with a tissue expander that will get swapped for an implant in a matter of hours. 

Both scarred.

I put my phone down and look to my left. On the wall next to my sink hangs the scroll I bought at the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas. Before.

I walked into the gift shop, alone. A few minutes later a monk arrived, dressed in an orange robe. They told me to let them know if I needed help and went to stand behind the counter, by the register.

I found the scroll and carried it with me as I looked at other items. I walked up to a rack of cards with quotes on them. I slowly started to spin it as my eyes glanced down at each—waiting, perhaps, for the right one to jump out at me.

It did.

I pulled it from the rack and went to check out.

The monk rang up the scroll, reached down to pick up the card, typed in the cost, and paused to read it.

On it was printed:

Never give up.
No matter what is going on around you.
Never give up.

The monk looked up and met my eyes.

“It’s an important one,” they said. “Never give up.”

We held eye contact for several moments. 

“I won’t,” I finally whispered. 

Standing in my bathroom, my eyes slide over the words on the scroll. 

They land on one line:

I have a precious human life. 

They slide to another:

I am going to benefit others as much as I can.

I remember the phone call with him, after he learned of my diagnoses.

I told him I was scared.

“I don’t want to die,” I said. “I haven’t helped enough people yet.”

There was another reason, too. Another reason I don’t want to die.

I didn’t tell him that reason: 

I haven’t been loved in the way I want to be loved yet.

I think back to the summer Before, to my last day at Glacier National Park—after the Garden, after days of hiking, and white water rafting, and horseback riding, and dining with strangers. Mornings on the porch and evenings watching the sun dip below the mountains, oh so late.

That last afternoon I wasn’t ready to leave. I had a beautiful hike in the morning and was sitting at a small table eating lunch when I became consumed with the need to be on water.

I paid the bill. I drove down to Lake McDonald. I rented a kayak.

I climbed in and paddled out, far from any other person, and stopped.

I had never kayaked alone.

My ex had always gone with me.

I thought of him—the day he told me he wanted a divorce, on Zoom, during couples counseling. He cried. 

“I’m never getting married again,” he said. “She’ll be fine.”

There’s no way I’m ever getting married again, I thought.

I was fine with it: moving somewhere closer to friends. Finding a little place. Being alone. No need to have sex, a partner. I’d figure it out.

I floated on that kayak, surrounded by glacier-cut mountains—the bright orange plastic bobbing in bold contrast to the turquoise blue of the lake. Blues layering on blues as the sky met the mountains and, in the distance, the mountains met the water. 

Out here, the only sound was the gentle lick of water against the kayak as it ever so slowly rocked itself on the top of the lake. 

I just sat—hat shading my face, sunglasses on, paddle resting across my lap. 

I allowed myself to pause, to stay, floating.

When the tears came I pulled off my sunglasses and wiped them away with the back of my hand. I sniffed.

As the tears continued to slip down my cheeks in a steady, gentle flow, I returned my hand to my lap and let them fall. I stared into the distance, to where the water met the mountains. The kayak rocked gently beneath me. All I heard was the soft lap of the water—and one very clear thought:

I am not done loving yet.

 

---

 

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