 Something for the Journey
Hannah Franco-Isaacs, Membership Administrator
Our parents (or other first caregivers) are our first teachers. They teach us to eat, to roll over, and sit up. They help us learn to read, to write. They help us learn to learn. In my case, my parents taught me how to love big, how to host a really good dinner party, how to weasel good gossip out of my friends, and, in a heartbreaking turn of events, how to die well.
I have recently returned from parental leave for my second child. Benji joined our family in November 2023 just as we learned that my mom was out of treatment options for her cancer. Benji was just learning how to live as my mom was learning how to die. She wanted to greet each day with gratitude, noticing the beauty in the everyday. She wanted to spend as much time with her children, grandchildren and close friends as possible. She taught us how to live a life where at the end she was able to say “I know what it is to have enough. I know what it is to be loved enough and to have loved enough.”
Last summer my mom participated in the UURMaPA conference. She was charged with speaking about what it means to live when you know you are going to die sooner rather than later. She said, “Since I was diagnosed I have held the tension of life and death knowing that my days are numbered. I have a sense of abundance through my children, grandchildren, my colleagues, and this precious faith. I get to say yes, yes. Life is telling me yes. No matter how many more days I have left, I get to say yes.”
To use one of my mom’s most favorite sayings, what’s true is that most of us don’t know how our lives will unfold. In the midst of all that unknowing, may we all live lives that lead us to enough, to living lives of abundance and saying yes to life.
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