Holding Ann

Sometimes we get lucky enough to know exceptional people. Exceptional can come in the form of people skills, career success, personal awareness, generosity, ability to inspire, expertise and passion, knowledge, wisdom.

I knew an exceptional person when I was only fourteen and she was too. Her name was Ann, and she went to my high school, and I thought she was capable of anything. I wonder why I thought that. Maybe it was because she seemed generally unaffected by what others thought of her, but that’s not to say she was brash and took the floor without tact or care. She was fully authentic decades before I understood what that meant, although I had a keen sense that she was able to do something that was a mystery to me—be herself freely. And if she couldn’t, she knew the best joke to break the ice.

Here’s an example of her exceptionalism:

In the lunchroom our big gaggle of friends sat together at long tables. We’d wind our way through the food line, gather our lunch, then arrive at a table to convene a meeting of the teenage minds. We’d squeeze together, chatting, chewing, laughing, decoding the puzzles of life. Then Ann would have a hankering for a joke. This would sometimes be a particular joke she seemed to like, for which she needed a mark. She had this recurring bit she’d do on anyone who was willing, and if nobody agreed, I’d step in to be the mark, even if I had been the mark many times, which meant it was only a formality. The idea was that she was a slot machine.

She’d ask me to take a handful of peanuts (money) and play them at the slot machine (her). She’d face me square to the eyes directly across the table, with her right palm opened flat on the table in front of me. Her left arm would be bent tight at the elbow, with the left hand squeezed into a fist and resting on her shoulder. The right palm on the table was where you put the money (peanuts). The left fist touching her shoulder was the handle you pulled down on at the slot machine to find out whether you won or lost.

So, I’d put my money into her palm and pull the handle. This made her palm rise slowly towards her mouth, deposit the peanuts into her mouth, and then settle back down on the table. Meanwhile, her eyes would be blinking every which way and her voice making a muffled dinging sound. This was the slot machine flipping through its icons to determine how many you matched. If her eyes landed on one-eye-open/one-eye-shut, this meant you lost and had to put in more peanuts and play again. If both her eyes opened wide and matched, then you won, which prompted Ann to spit out the peanuts with a great excitement, “Bing! Bing! Bing! You won!”

And this was lunch with Ann. We’d all be cackling hysterically while the strewn wet peanut winnings sat spent on the lunch table. We repeatedly admired this ridiculous invention of hers that never seemed to lose its comedic impact. Teenage girls love to laugh together, and Ann had honed expert facility to that end. Back then, I thought that was quite exceptional.

But, of course, Ann wasn’t all fun and games. She was the middle child in a family run by her father, as her mom hadn’t been well for some years. Ann’s father was busy with his career in the restaurant industry, which meant Ann and her siblings were left to their own choices more than some of us. Ann chose well for herself. She was a great student, the head of our student council, an athlete, and supportive friend to many of the kids in our graduating class, which is not an exaggeration.

What I remember most about Ann back then was that she was a builder: of her life, of others’ confidence, of ideas, of outcomes, of mirth. She was always doing something to move it forward, be it academic, extra-curricular, social, job-related, volunteer, you name it. I thought her energy would last forever. It seemed to beget itself.

When we were freshmen, our high school held a talent show one evening. Anyone could enter a performance, so Ann entered a song. She brought a friend to play the guitar next to her on stage while she sat on a stool under a spotlight and sang Landslide by Fleetwood Mac. She was a gifted singer, with a husky, beautiful voice. I have never forgotten the way my body broke out in goosebumps with her first words into the microphone that night, and her complete embrace of the message of the song.

Oh, mirror in the sky What is love? Can the child within my heart rise above? Can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life?

How many music performances have I seen since that night? Many. But I still hold onto the feeling I had when Ann sang that song on that long ago night. Here was this person I deeply admired up on stage, who was as strong as I could ever hope to be, singing so heartfelt about not knowing, about hope, about asking the great sky for answers. I predicted then that living out our lives would be something unfathomable and monumental. I decided, sitting in the darkened audience that night, I’d live toward hope as life pulled me forward. This was before I knew what hardship was, or how crucial hope would turn out to be.

Then, as it was always going to be, we graduated and moved off into the country to our respective colleges: mine in Philadelphia, Ann’s in Boston. There were a handful of times when I saw Ann after high school, but after that we lost touch. This was mostly due to me, since I know others stayed in touch with her for years. Eventually, Facebook came around and we all reconnected through the platform. One day the unfortunate news came around our circle of friends that Ann was battling cancer and it wasn’t going well. It was suggested that we might call to say goodbye.

Folks were getting in touch with her, calling her hospital room, telling Ann what they best could, but not me just yet. I walked around in my mind, trying to come up with words. To that point in time, I’d had no experience with such things, yet many of my friends had found a way to pick up the phone and say goodbye. I stalled and hemmed and fiddled with my own discomfort about what to do. I hadn’t talked to Ann in a long time. How to sound cheerful while saying goodbye while saying it’s been a while? It was my great puzzle.

But it turned out that I never did have to figure out the best way to say these things. Ann died before I let myself try. I missed the boat as she sailed off into the pantheon of beloved figures in my high school class who died too young, but who made a difference.

That was ten years ago. In the intervening time I’ve learned how to hold someone who is dying in my emotional care, how to talk with that person, and it doesn’t have to do with being cheerful. It’s how you’d talk with anyone going through difficulty or traversing new and uncertain ground: with openness, with compassion, with acknowledgment of their challenge. You go right up to the doorstep of their person and deliver the message: I see you. I see what you’re carrying. I’m here. It’s letting them know that you can clearly see them on the map of our collective realities.

It’s simple. And, as it happens, it’s more about hearing than speaking anyway.

I’ve also learned that by acknowledging someone’s burden you might provide a pivot for that person, a sudden moment of capability to turn towards an easing or a new understanding. Us humans are quick to imagine we suffer in anonymity and uniquely, but neither of these are true. Discovering this can be the ultimate game changer.

In the time since Ann died, I discovered that being there for someone is not as difficult as I’d assumed those years ago. It has nothing to do with fixing a burden or solving a problem. It has to do with holding someone. In the case of dying, there’s no fixing. Rather, there’s support and witness. Sometimes all we need is quiet companionship and unfettered holding. Just as being held by the arms is wonderful, so too is being held by the heart.

But we don’t have to be moving closer to our last days to warrant such care and understanding. We need this while living life in the day-to-day. Perhaps this is because life is a series of tiny deaths: the death of hopes and dreams; the death of circumstances; the death of progress and optimism; the death of understanding and clarity. We hit roadblocks. We hit stalemates and hurdles. We hit not knowing. We hit loss.

And, while holding others is a much-needed act of unconditional love, the truth is that we need to hold ourselves through life even more so. For many folks this is not such an intuitive undertaking. It’s a hard nut to crack I’ve found. Sledgehammer-hard.

It’s not necessarily the most obvious need to see in the world—the need for our own compassion--and it’s not the easiest to keep track of. But it’s doable and learnable. For example, I’ve been able to acknowledge that it was hard to find the courage to say goodbye to Ann. This allowed me to accept. Perhaps this enabled me to tell you the story of my funny, lovely friend. Perhaps this is my small way of saying goodbye.

For Christmas this year my son gave my husband and I recordings of songs he played on his guitar. One was Landslide. It’s one of my favorite songs, and as I listened to the recording my heart did a mini extra beat. The people I love seem to love this song. To hear another young person sing those lyrics, and ask the perennial big questions, to search for meaning in uncertainty, and for it to be my son, it was a full circle of sorts.

Mirror in the sky, can you tell me how this all goes, this life? It goes around and around, in countless circles, always relearning for itself and rediscovering the mysteries, which are the same recycled mysteries, person after person, generation by generation. I think if you could speak, you brilliantly beautiful space of air, you’d tell me there’s no answer, but there’s always a listening. A hearing. A seeing. A holding. And it’s all too short, but it’s truly, genuinely, superbly whole.