In March, I did several newspaper interviews, one with a doctor who’d lost his daughter the long and hard way to cancer. I also testified in Sacramento before the Senate Health Committee. It was on this trip that I met a new friend. Her name was Christy O’Donnell, and she was at the capitol with her beautiful daughter, Bailey. We liked each other immediately. Christy was an attorney, former police officer, and a single mom. She and I both had given birth to one and only one beloved child. We both had one daughter. Our situations were reversed, but in a sense the same.
Over dinner, Christy expressed the thought that we were both being separated from our daughters by cancer: in my case, cancer had taken my child; in her case, her own cancer would steal her life.
Over the next year, Christy and I would grow very close as I moved through grief and grew stronger, and while she grew weaker and died. We testified together, picketed for “death with dignity” together, took Bailey to high tea, went for massages and facials. As Christy grew more and more ill, I took my father’s old wheelchair up for her to use, and then arranged for a special hot air balloon ride for her over the vineyards of Temecula.
I cleaned her house, brought her food, and at the very end, I sat on her bed and fed her. Our friendship had been encouraged by a kindhearted reporter, and to this day, I can never thank Nicki at People magazine enough for suggesting that Christy and I had the makings of a forever friendship.
I think Christy held out a flicker of hope that she would benefit from the legislation she campaigned so hard for, but in her heart she knew that in all likelihood she would die before the law was enacted. (She died on February 6, 2016, at age forty-seven, about four months before the End of Life Option Act went into effect on June 9.) Christy was a dignified woman, and she and I had discussed that all death, no matter the path we must take, is in some way dignified because death is in and of itself a sacred passage. Even a soldier who cries for his mother as he dies on the battlefield is dignified. In the end this thought was of little comfort because Christy shared with me repeatedly that if she were legally able, she would choose to use medical aid in dying, rather than suffer the terrible seizures and loss of autonomy that she experienced in the end.
Christy told me that the greatest compliment I ever gave her was when I said she gave me a glimpse of what Brittany might have been like at Christy’s age. The two of them were so wickedly smart, funny, and strong.
In May, the California Medical Association changed their position about the End of Life Option Act. Christy and I were overjoyed to hear that they admitted that sometimes medical discoveries and excellent medical care weren’t enough for the terminally ill. They left the decision to be made between the doctor and the patient, removing their objection to patients seeking end-of-life options. This was an important day, and I felt Brittany’s powerful energy all around me.
On June 4, Gary and I were in Sacramento again with a photo of Brittany when the California Senate passed the legislation. We met with reporters after the vote. It was an emotional day for everyone, and I knew Brittany would have been proud.
For the last two weeks of June, I’d planned a surprise for my niece Erica. We were taking her and her family to the redwoods, staying in San Francisco for a few days, and then driving down the coast of California, ending up in Carlsbad. I knew that Brittany would have loved every detail of the trip. I felt her energy and blessings for her cousin as I planned it. While in the redwoods, we got a call to drop everything and come to the capitol for testimony for the House of Representatives.
Before Gary and I rented a car and drove the seven hours to Sacramento, we had a blissful day with our niece among some of the oldest redwoods in California. We found a momma redwood scarred from fires. She was bumpy and hollowed out a bit, but still standing—reaching skyward, green and beautiful. Erica was hollowed out from her fight with cancer, and my heart had a huge Brittany-shaped hole in it. As we looked up at this tree’s branches, we both drew strength as we studied burls and scars of a tree that had survived hundreds of years.
I would need to remember this tree because on this trip to Sacramento, one of California’s representatives told me that there was “beauty in suffering.” I was so taken aback, I could hardly speak.
When I could stammer out an answer, I said, “I can assure you that Brittany’s suffering was not beautiful. There was nothing beautiful about it.” What I really wanted to do was plant my high heel in the middle of the representative’s forehead about an inch deep and then say, “Here, I want you to have a beautiful day. Isn’t suffering great?” The bill stalled out in the Assembly Health Committee, and Gary and I flew back to meet our family for the rest of the vacation.
In July, Gary and I went to British Columbia for my birthday. Grief hit me hard, making it difficult to breathe. I kept thinking that I shouldn’t be having more birthdays, if my daughter couldn’t. Grief is not kind or rational. Grief is not careful about timing. Grief can ebb and flow. You can become complacent thinking that the worst is over, and wham! Grief will knock the air out of you. You drop to your knees. You feel grief tugging at your insides, twisting them, ripping them out of your body.
We stayed on a farm. Sarah, her husband, and her daughter joined us there. There were figs everywhere. We picked fresh raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. My sister baked the figs with cheese and drizzled local honey over them and sprinkled them with roasted bits of walnut. She made a berry cobbler. Brittany had left me three gifts for my birthday. I simply couldn’t open them. I needed to keep the brightly wrapped packages until another time. I would know when it was right.
When we returned, I was vacuuming our sofa, and I pulled off the cushions. A silver bracelet that I’d bought Brittany glimmered in the sunlight. The bracelet said, “Live in the moment.” You can call it what you want: Chance. Luck. Coincidence. I called it “grace.”
More and more, as I grieved, I gravitated to something C. S. Lewis wrote. He said essentially that we are souls. We don’t possess a soul; instead, we are souls that briefly possess a body. I began to feel that human beings are energy, light, and love. This thought was bigger than anything I’d learned at a church. Yes, there was an eternal quality to this new truth I was feeling, but it wasn’t at all about heaven or hell. It wasn’t about angels with wings or streets paved in gold. It was much bigger than all of those childhood teachings.
In August, Brittany sent me peaches. I opened the ninth box of fruit from my daughter. All these painful months later, I could now put the fruit to my mouth and eat. Each succulent bite was like a sacrament, an act of love. Eating a peach from Brittany was like taking her love inside me, swallowing joy and light and love. She was sending me what I needed to write our story, my precious peach of a girl. I would draw energy and love through the velvety surface, the fuzzy skin with the golden flesh that melted in my mouth. The peaches reminded me of warm days and sun-bleached branches.
One day as I was writing this book, it began thundering, lightning, and raining. Not a great coincidence to some, except that I live in Southern California, where we were in the middle of a long drought. No area was feeling this severe drought more than San Diego. We could go for months, even years, without lightning.
It was rare enough that I stopped writing and went outside. I stood faceup toward the sky. I smelled the rain and the thirsty earth, and I got soaking wet. I whispered to the rain, “Brittany.” I didn’t want the storm to end, but it lasted only a few minutes.
I hadn’t danced in the rain, but afterward I wished I had. I recalled the time when Brittany was little and I took her hand and we danced in the rain in our backyard. But on the day I wrote this, she was gone, and there was no dance left in me. I just let the sweet rain pour down and mix with my tears. I promised my daughter that I’d dance the next time.
The week of September 7 was a tense one as Christy, Gary, and I urged representatives in Sacramento to pass the End of Life Option Act. On September 9 the bill passed in the House after a moving
message from one of its authors, Susan Talamantes Eggman. The Senate passed it on September 11. We were exhausted but hopeful. The bill now needed to go before California’s governor.
Christy and I marched on the governor’s office in Los Angeles. Katie Couric had a crew filming some of our work together. Christy was failing, and knew that the bill would never pass in time for her to utilize it. My friend reminded me so much of Brittany near the end. It was like their life flames quickened for days and weeks as they exuded energy and purpose in their dying moments. I had seen this in Brittany, and marveled that many people are driven by a goal tougher than their cancer or illness, and that cause gives them resolve and perseverance until the very end.
On October 5, 2015, Governor Jerry Brown signed the End of Life Option Bill, which to me was “Brittany’s Bill.” Gary and I wrote letters to Governor Brown and had them delivered by overnight express.
In an extraordinary signing message, the governor touched my heart. Governor Brown had clearly searched his conscience, and consulted with experts and religious leaders. He had even spoken with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In the end, the governor understood why terminally ill people would be comforted by having options. I admired him for his courageous decision. I would like to give him a hug, straight from Brittany. She’d had an opportunity to speak to him before she passed away, about how much harder it made everything about dying to have to leave your home and friends and move to a different state.
Although glad about the bill’s passing, I was emotionally wrung out, and dreading the one-year anniversary of Brittany’s death. I told Gary that there was only one place on the planet that I thought I might be able to draw in oxygen on that day: Machu Picchu, where Brittany had asked me to meet her.
I experienced several terrible crying jags. After a particularly bad one, my husband took me in his arms. I could feel how badly he wanted me to come back to him. I could feel his unwavering love in the way he cradled my head and the quaver in his voice when he said he would make Machu Picchu happen.
And he did.
Epilogue: Machu Picchu
November 1, 2015, Exactly One Year to the Day After Brittany’s Death
It’s one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it’s another to think that yours is the only path.
— Paulo Coelho
Somewhere a noise nudged me awake, softly at first, along the edges of my awareness, then more insistently. What was it? I struggled to surface. My throat felt a bit tickly and my eyes itched. Where was I? Ah, the smell of an indoor fire gave it away. Thanks to the compassion and generosity of a Peruvian hotelier, I was in a casita at Inkaterra Hotel. The noise I heard was rain, and it was stirring up smoke fumes in my fireplace.
Our hosts had met us in Lima, taken us out to eat among ancient ruins, given us a detailed guide on how to catch the plane, train, taxi, and bus that we would need to take to the tiny town of Aguas Calientes. These two beautiful women understood that this was much more than a vacation. Kindness shone from their eyes as they recounted how they had seen Britt’s YouTube video, where they first heard about my daughter’s request for me to meet her in Machu Picchu after she passed. They had looked at each other and said in unison, “We can make this happen.” And so it was that a Peruvian hotelier gave us not just shelter, but the kind of welcome and attention that allowed healing. We came to them in broken jagged pieces. They handled us with kid gloves.
The steady thrumming on the roof tiles grew louder, then softer as the rain came in waves. I fell back against the pillows and reached for my watch. It was 4:05 a.m., the hour we’d originally planned on getting up to leave for Machu Picchu. I pulled my thick comforter up around my neck and snuggled deeper into the pillows. I was glad we’d decided to tackle the mountain midday, as our guide had suggested, but if the rain continued, I had brought the proper boots, hat, and slicker. Nothing was keeping me away from Brittany. I fell back to sleep smiling.
By the time we met Carmela, our guide, the rain was nothing but a sprinkle. Carmela smiled. “It rained hard from four until seven a.m. The early risers had a rough trip up the mountain. I called it right this time.”
We’d spent about ten minutes the evening before explaining what we hoped to accomplish among the ruins of the Lost City of the Incas. It would be up to Carmela to intuit when to talk and offer information, and when to hang back and let us commune with our daughter. Clearly she understood that this was not an ordinary tour.
As we walked down the terraced hills on a winding stone pathway, we saw six different types of hummingbirds. These tiny, joyful birds, wings whirring, seemed always to appear when I was missing Brittany the most. Sweeping down for bites of bananas tied to the limbs of a tree, blue-and-black tanagers caused sudden showers of rain from the waxy green leaves. Growing low and lush were milky white orchids. We walked past a waterfall and heard the rushing Vilcanota River somewhere below. We trudged on in the light rain through the narrow streets of Aguas Calientes.
Soon we clambered aboard a packed bus for the ride up the mountain. The road was narrow, with almost vertical drops plunging down into the Vilcanota Valley. The bus had to pull to the side when meeting another bus coming the opposite way. During the ride I caught glimpses of pink and orange orchids in the Rain Cloud Forest, called Wiñay Wayna, which means “forever young.” At one point in her illness, Brittany had said that the only good thing about dying was that she’d never get wrinkles; she would be forever young.
When the bus pulled to a stop, we headed for the entrance and the self-stamp station for our passports. The stamp is brag-worthy, and I know Brittany was proud of hers. It is a drawing of the lost city and the mountains in the background. The sound of the stamp—“Parque Arqueologico Nacional De MACHU PICCHU Nov 1, 2015”—exactly one year from Brittany’s death, marked my commitment to meet her here.
We pushed through turnstiles and began our odyssey. The vegetation was exotic and shrouded the citadel, a true lost city when Hiram Bingham stumbled upon the ruins in the early 1900s with the aid of a peasant. Carmela pointed to the crowds in this area of the city. “I know a very sacred spot on the way up that is not heavily visited. You may find a connection there in privacy.”
“I read that the Intihuatana stone, or solar clock, is full of energy. That if you put your forehead on the stone, you can feel it. Would that be a good place?” I huffed and puffed as I tried to speak while climbing the steep steps.
“We will go to the Intihuatana, but you may be disappointed. You will not be allowed to touch the stone. There is a guard and it is roped off. Also, that is a busy place here. There is no privacy. But I am taking you to a special place. It is on the trail to the sun gate, but it’s a much more private spot. It is the place where they found the bones of a young Incan girl and her dog who were buried here during the 1400s.”
I shivered.
“Brittany loved her dogs so much,” I commented as we followed Carmela’s compact khaki-clad form up the worn stone steps. I shuddered again, thinking it was likely that at some point I would step exactly where Brittany had trod on these narrow winding trails. There was an eerie sense of how many people had stepped on these stones, wearing them into a cup shape.
“I think you will like this spot,” Carmela said. “I thought carefully last night about where you might be able to feel enough quiet and peace to enter into the mysterious communication we’re capable of on this sacred mountain.”
The stones of the trail and the buildings seemed almost alive, as if they could speak. The Incas were expert stone builders, using a type of construction called “ashlar” in which stones fit together so perfectly that not even a knife blade can fit between them, and no mortar was used.
We took lots of rest breaks, during which I looked out at the terraced slopes. Sixty percent of the engineering of the terracing and the city was underground, an elaborate drainage system that insured that the city would live forever, even on steep slopes with seventy-seven inches a year of rain.
As I climbed, it never crossed my mind that Brittany might not be here. I simply knew with certainty that she would meet me. My daughter and I had always gone out of our way to keep our promises to each other, both big and small.
After climbing for forty-five minutes, we stopped at a large overhanging rock. In front of the huge boulder was a low terraced wall, with four steps in the middle.
“This is where they found the young girl’s bones,” Carmela said. “She was holding her dog.”
I climbed the steps and searched the face of the wall. I found an oval tipped at a slight angle, like the shape of a face in the stone. I turned, and Gary took me in his arms. We were both vibrating. I heard a sob, something I’d never heard before from my husband.
“Do you feel it?” I asked him.
“I do,” he said.
“She’s here.” Turning from him, I tried to hug the wall of rock.
You can love me lightly. Momma, you don’t have to hold so tightly. My daughter’s voice was kind, loving, and slightly bemused. I pulled one arm away and then the other, until only the tip of my pointer finger touched the stone. She was right. I felt her all around me just as strongly as when I’d tried to embrace the rock.
We are one. Her voice bubbled in my head, sounding happy and content. We are love. I am in you, and you are in me.
This was not a thought I’d ever contemplated. I’d thought about mankind, how we all cry, laugh, bleed, but I’d never thought of us being one. I’d definitely navigated my way through life as a separate, individual, even lonely being, and if ever there was a girl who was independent, separate, and autonomous, it was my daughter. Now Brittany was telling me that we were one? Intuitively I knew she was talking about a collective “we,” not just mother and daughter.
All is as it should be.
I wanted to scream “No . . . no . . . no!” But no words escaped me. I just stood quivering like a drawn bowstring. I felt the energy inside me of the arrow waiting to fly. I wanted resolution. I wanted the answer, but I was unwilling to hear this one.
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