Still thinking about What Sarah Said

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time

I planned to join a couple of Alaska friends for a 100-mile loop in the San Juan Mountains of Southern Colorado this week. It was the only adventure I had planned for the summer. The only one. And it’s been such a tough summer. After I was caught in the smoke plume of that California wildfire in May, nearly every day since has been hard for one reason or another. I deserved an adventure, damn it. Even if my lungs balked, I was going to force the miles out of them. I paid for my share of the trip expenses, packed up my gear, and became increasingly excited for this much-needed escape.

On Wednesday, surprising myself, I sent my friends a message to let them know I wasn’t coming. The trip didn’t feel right. It felt like it would be a mistake, like something I’d regret.

Beat assured me the “Softrock” route that my friends are running will still be there in the future, but that doesn’t feel true. In addition to all of the logistics I’d have to work out, if I’m honest, given the option to run the route or to never spend another summer in Colorado, I’m sure I’d pick the latter. I’m tired of my breathing difficulties. So tired. And I’m even more tired of grief. So, so tired. But I keep plowing forward, because life doesn’t care about our sickness and pain. Life didn’t care about my friend Betsy’s sickness and pain. So I’m still here.

Betsy went on hospice on Tuesday, July 1, and I’ve returned to her house to visit her nearly every day since. Her doctors, seeing the image of a baseball-sized tumor in her skull, assured her these last miles of her cancer journey would go quickly. She seemed to take comfort in that. Her family set up a hospital bed in their living room. It’s the only place she can realistically be, but it means that every indignity is carried out in plain sight. For the first couple of days, she was able to go outside in her wheelchair, but her mobility rapidly decreased to limited use of her right hand and arm. She can’t even hold her head up. Now, simply moving her in bed causes her to cry out in pain. She has lucid moments, but most of the time, she is either asleep or very far away.

Her lucid moments are equal parts beautiful and heartbreaking. She expresses her love and future wishes for her family. She takes comfort when people read to her — her requests are “A Liturgy for Dying Well” and summaries of her favorite books. But she frequently asks why this isn’t over yet. Where is her doctor? Is it really July 12? That can’t be true. Everyone has forgotten her. She’s afraid of dying alone.

She has other friends besides me who visit her regularly and help with the mounting tasks of caregiving for a bedridden adult. I’ve enjoyed getting to know them better. Her mom waits by her bedside day and night, and her husband and daughter are there much of the time. But I can still understand how Betsy feels isolated and alone. The world is going on without her. Her body has stopped working. Her eyesight is gone. Her voice is almost inaudible. All she has left are touch and gentle words from the people around her.

In the right moments, with the right touch and words, she melts with palpable happiness. These moments are bursting with such love that I can’t imagine how I ever wanted to leave. But then I go home, and night comes, and I’m awake at 3 a.m. crying in bed again. My mind goes to the dark places I’ve managed to avoid for more than two years. These moments are imploding with such sorrow that I can’t imagine why we bother with any of this. We come into this world helpless and afraid, then we leave it the same, and everything in the middle suddenly seems meaningless and cruel.

It’s July 12, and I’ve only managed one outdoor activity this month. Just one. Tuesday, July 8, was Betsy’s husband’s birthday. He turned 49. All he wanted for his birthday was a morning out hiking with his 13-year-old daughter. They invited me, and I was grateful to be included, because I want to remain a part of both of their lives. So even though it involved waking up at 5:30 a.m. on the busiest day of my workweek, I rallied.

Beat joined me for the first leg, guiding me up his secret route up South Boulder Peak so I could hike down and join the father and daughter in Shadow Canyon. It had been a couple of years at least since I last braved Beat’s route. Even though we lovingly call the route “The Hairy Backside,” I’d forgotten how rough and hairy it is, all Stairmaster-steep slopes and bouldering. My body felt like mush, like a lukewarm bowl of shrimp and grits (Betsy’s current favorite food, but I’ll admit that I don’t think I can stomach the smell of the stuff for much longer.) My breathing was rougher than I’d hoped, and my legs were heavy.

Still, it was a gorgeous morning. The air was clear, and the views were crisp and popping with morning light. It warmed my heart to see their father-daughter hiking rituals, and they were a lot of fun even as the daughter complained of her own heavy legs and nausea. They needed to get out so badly. I realized that I did, too. I resolved to join my friends in the San Juans, and Betsy’s family gave me their blessing.

But the next day, I realized the adventure was the thing I wanted, but it wasn’t what was right. These heavy, horrible days of Betsy’s hospice are days none of us will ever get back. She’s still here, and very soon she won’t be. Grief and love walk hand in hand.

I have learned a lot from this experience. It’s interesting to witness the emotions that come out at the end of life, the anger and regret, the yearning for finality and closure. But there’s also genuine gratitude for the smallest things. Today, there was a failure with the catheter tube that created an enormous mess and a lot of discomfort for Betsy. But in the cleaning process, Betsy got a “shower” (a sponge bath), and the feeling of being clean made her so happy that she insisted on writing about it in the daily calendar that has become her hospice journal. On the lines below July 12, she scribbled in her illegible handwriting that we asked her to read back to us: “Another stuck in bed day. A shower, yay!” Followed by “I love my family.”

For most of Thursday, I was angry about giving up my adventure. I wasn’t angry at Betsy or myself or anyone else. My anger was unfocused and messy, anger at the universe for being so damn mean. Later in the day, dry lightning storms rumbled across the state and lit a half dozen new wildfires. Smoke poured into the region from Nevada and Canada, and suddenly, even my indoor breathing became raspy. I realized that, even without this one opportunity to show my love to Betsy, I wouldn’t have been able to embark on my much-desired trip. I should never have planned on it. The smoke might come and go, but the fact that smoke could blow in at any moment meant I couldn’t risk long days in the high mountains with no quick escape. I felt like I was dying in the California fire back in May, and that was just a short period of exposure.

The following day — Friday, July 11 — was the start of the Hardrock 100. Hardrock is an incredibly difficult 100-mile ultramarathon that created the route we planned to follow, which is called “Softrock” when used by non-racers. My friends were going to spectate at the race start before beginning their independent four-day trip on Saturday morning. The race, which launched in a haze of smoky air that I wouldn’t have been able to tolerate, brought its own tragedy when a 60-year-old woman collapsed on the first pass and died. The medical reasons have yet to be determined. But she was highly experienced, fit, and otherwise healthy.

You can't know. You can't ever really know.

I’m supposed to join Beat in the San Juans this coming weekend to crew for him in another impossibly tough mountain race, the Ouray 100. I confess I’m still hoping this happens, still planning for it. As Betsy slips farther into oblivion, my presence and gestures of love slip with her. Meanwhile, my depression strengthens, threatening to pull me back into the depths I worked so hard to climb out of in 2023. I wish this weren’t my truth, that I’m not strong enough to shoulder this weight. I try to hold Betsy’s hand and tell myself I can be strong. But 3 a.m. will come again. It will come tonight. And the mesas are burning, the world is burning, and Betsy is leaving in the horribly cruel and painful manner so many of us must. And I’m not strong enough to endure any of it.

And yet even as it pulls me under, I can’t let go. I’m haunted by that song from Death Cab for Cutie, for which I named this post.

It’s What Sarah Said:

“Love is watching someone die.”