Our lives are shaped by a series of stories intersecting with one another as we each move along the arc of our own narratives. Endings and beginnings. Beginnings and endings. 

Today it has been two years since my mother died from cancer (May 11, 2017). I’m not typically one to make much of the anniversary of such life events. Yet, here I am, once again, marking the occasion as I did last year. It appears I can no longer look down my nose and espouse that I don’t go in for such trivial things as anniversaries.  

I’ve been pondering endings and beginnings lately, both of which can be bittersweet. Seneca (the Roman philosopher) said “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” I find myself sifting through things that have happened in this past year and parsing them into exactly that…1) new beginnings, or 2) some other beginning’s end.

Life is a complex series of such endings and beginnings.

Earlier this year my husband Glenn flew to Texas to meet up with a bunch of childhood buddies to say goodbye to Tim, a beloved friend that was dying of complications from cancer. Glenn and Tim met when they were in the 6th grade, almost 40 years ago.

It got me thinking about the numerous beginnings and endings they have shared over the years. Jobs and cars and girlfriends, family deaths, graduations, marriages, kids and divorces. 

Even Tim’s death, which was certainly an ending of a sort, brought forth a beginning in terms of a renewed bond of deep friendship between a group of guys that grew up together, yet now lead largely separate lives. They have that kind of coming of age connection that is a transcending and enduring gift. No doubt this group of childhood friends will continue to experience the ongoing cycle of endings and beginnings for decades to come, and hopefully in that sharing they will celebrate the awareness of the other.

Sometimes you must reach really, really, hard for a new beginning. 

My friend John lost his wife Melissa to cancer the day after my mother died. John and I shared the visceral experience of sitting vigil beside a loved one’s deathbed at the same exact moment in time. In the days, weeks and months that followed I found in John a kindred spirit with whom I could let down my defenses and work through my grief, in part because he was right there with me in his own grief. 

Although losing my mother was by far the most impactful event I’ve ever experienced, I can’t imagine what John has gone through having lost the love of his life at such a young age. It’s not hard for me to imagine “what comes next” after the death of my mother because it is a natural extension of what was already happening before she died. For John though, “what comes next” is an entirely different question. How do you go on living a (presumably) long life when the person you thought you’d be doing that with is gone? 

A little over a week ago I dropped John off at the airport. He had quit his job; sold, donated or discarded most everything he owned; put his house up for sale; boxed up the remains of his (and Melissa’s) life into a small storage unit; packed a few changes of clothes into the tiniest backpack I’ve ever seen; and bought a one-way ticket to a far-off land. 

He doesn’t exactly know where he’ll go, what he’ll see, who he’ll meet. His goal is to try to be gone for a minimum of 6-months, to push himself outside of his comfort zone and to remain open to what comes instead of planning everything out as is his natural tendency. 

John and Melissa loved to travel together and made it a priority in their lives. What John is doing now isn’t a vacation though. He is reaching for what comes next. Intentionally crafting a new beginning by opening himself up to the universe and untethering from the constructs of what came before. I’m so proud of and inspired by John’s courage and I can’t help but imagine that Melissa is too.

It’s all about the middle bits.

Earlier this year another kindred spirit, friend and colleague passed from cancer. Betsy and I lived our lives in largely separate orbits, yet I felt a profound connection to her. She and I shared many of the same passions including dogs, travel and photography. We both loved being surrounded by and wearing vibrant colors.

Although our jobs were quite different, I think our co-workers might describe us in a similar way: as a trusted confidant, a creative problem-solver and a source of calm in the storm. She loved hummingbirds, and I have a tattoo of a hummingbird on my back that is in an artistic style I think she would have loved. 

She was battling cancer the same time my mother was, but Betsy was very open about her own experience which helped to make what I was going through with my mother a little less scary. 

She didn’t just love travel…she loved adventure…and we would often compare notes. I recall one exchange related to some places Glenn and I were visiting in New Zealand. She had several of her grandmother’s old travel journals and was planning to retrace her grandmother’s steps, including a trip to the town Glenn and I were visiting at the time. She created a lovely blog of her travel adventures, including excerpts from her grandmother’s journals in the same locations 50 years prior.

I don’t presume to know how Betsy felt about me, but it’s impossible to describe the deep connection I felt I had with her. It was as though we were cut from the same cloth. That cloth was made into different outfits worn by different people, but it connected the essence of us none-the-less.

We had lots of random points of connection that likely seem superficial from the outside, but felt cosmic from the inside. Case in point, just today I discovered that Betsy’s last blog post about retracing her grandmother’s travels was a May 2018 trip to Norway, including sailing into the arctic around Svalbard – pretty much the most northern place in the world you can travel. Just one year later, in May of 2019, I’ll be in Norway…including sailing into the arctic around Svalbard. Are you kidding me?!?!? What are the odds of that?

When I looked at Betsy I saw a reflection of myself…or at least what I could only hope was a reflection of myself. That realization hit me hard during her celebration of life ceremony. Listening to her friends and family speak, seeing countless pictures she had taken on her many adventures, the openness with which she developed lasting relationships, and the vulnerability with which she shared things about herself with others that most would never do…these are all things that made Betsy so very special. I’d like to think I’d be lucky enough to have friends and family say I share some of her same traits. 

Upon Betsy’s death, many of her friends and family members were given small containers of her ashes. They have since spread her ashes all over the world. Places Betsy had visited and loved, places she hadn’t yet visited but would have loved all the same: New York, Mexico (several locations), Berlin, the Columbia Gorge, Budapest, Iceland, Guatemala, Point Reyes National Seashore, Prague, Chile, Arizona, California, Jamaica, Argentina, Sweden…on and on and on.

I would love for that to happen with my ashes when I die (take note!). I can’t think of a more wonderful tribute. It’s a testament to Betsy’s adventurous soul, but also to her amazing capacity for love and for building such a rich and amazing network of friends and family that would be so moved as to leave a small piece of her in such places. 

Betsy embodied how I hope to live my life. I left her celebration of life with a renewed commitment to not focus on the endings, or the beginnings, but to instead focus on the middle bits by making the most of every moment. That’s what Betsy did.

Beginning, middle and end. The middle is where the magic and adventure happen. As much as I’d love to have a happy ending, I think I’d rather work to have a happy middle instead.