Leslie's BlogPassing the Flame
Author’s Note: I have been granted the generous permission to publish this story by my former client’s husband. All names have been changed to protect identities. L.T.
Flipping through client files my hands cross over the stiff manila folders, touching names printed in the corner. Unbidden, each person come across in flashes as bright as a snapshot. The man who struggles to be successful, especially when it’s at his fingertips. Here is a woman who loves the boyfriend who only loves her for what she can do for him. My long-term client who comes in monthly for a check-in, keeping it light and breezy at the beginning of the hour then honing it down to her fears toward the last few minutes. Every person’s essence courses up from the files via my fingertips, their sadness, hopes, resentments, dreams, and fears of dreams that may never come to pass.
For the past several months I have passed over the file of one client. “Jackie” (not her real name) was a petite woman in her early-sixties who dressed as if she had just strolled out of a Coldwater Creek catalog. You would never know she was living with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. Engaging and bright, she had that Texas charm as soothing as honey on a warm buttered biscuit. Her hair, wavy brown with subtle gold streaks, was a little too perfect, hinting at her baldness underneath the styled wig. But it was her fear of death that filled up the room. Her eyes peered out intently, riveting you. With some clients you can sit back, relax, and just talk in a more conversational way. In our sessions I found myself sitting up straighter, my mind sharpened like a tennis player facing a pro with a wicked serve. When Jackie spoke you paid her your full attention because that is what she gave you. We discussed how to live a life when death had pulled up a chair and was waiting patiently as each cancerous cell methodically divided into another daughter-cancer cell.
Jackie was not scheduled for a session, nor had I seen her in almost six weeks. Usually I would have shelved the chart out of my active file in order to make room for more current clients, but something in me refused to allow that. If I put the file away it would mean our work was put on hold and left in limbo. Not knowing her current state of mind, I wasn’t ready to let her go. The file stayed put.
I tried calling her a few weeks earlier to reschedule a previously canceled appointment. She had picked up the phone sounding frazzled and distracted. “Jackie,” I’d asked, relieved to hear her voice, “am I calling at a good time?”
“No,” she’d replied tersely. I’m driving and my friend and I are trying to find a house in this rain. Now isn’t a good time to talk.”
“Okay,” I said, “call me when you can to reschedule.” Before we hung up I could hear a woman’s voice in the background asking Jackie a question. I found it comforting to know that while she was out-and-about driving through the rain reading house numbers, she had a friend riding shotgun beside her.
One morning I saw on my phone a text message from her husband and I breathed in cold dread, punching the message open: Jackie had died the previous night surrounded by loved ones. My six-month-old kitten, Roxy, wound her warm, sleek body around my ankles, purring, her world unchanged.
The amazing thing about denial is that it is a defense mechanism made of a stretched-thin membrane lashed to keep hard truths, such as cancer patients die from cancer, at bay. Once punctured, reality rushes in with icy clarity leaving us gasping at its starkness. I felt dizzy reading the small words set in heavy block type on my phone.
She was a fighter. She was responding well to the chemotherapy. She was making plans to live with cancer and make the best of it for the next ten-to-twenty years the doctors said may actually be open to her. She had just made the determined milestone of dancing at her only child’s wedding two months prior. At our last session, with a cane propped up against the couch and her face paled from her recent chemotherapy, she relaxed into the couch cushions, her voice warming with the memories, saying, “The wedding was just lovely. I felt so happy and blessed to have been there. My boy is married to a wonderful girl and I made it.” Her eyes brimmed with tears as memories swept her back to the ceremony and reception, easing the pain of the cancer.
Jackie was a study in opposites. She was stunned and angry that cancer had returned after lying dormant for over a decade, often asking “why.” Some days she could be totally filled by her life, bubbling with a natural love for helping others. This gift showed up one morning when she came into our session carrying a large tote bag lined with a pink bathrobe and spilling terry cloth out from the sides. Something inside was rustling and she gave me a small conspirator’s smile, setting the bag down between us.
“I want you to see my babies,” she said, her Abilene accent icing each word. Reaching down, she pulled out a little orange-and-white scrap of protesting fur, a kitten with eyes welded-shut and body trembling. From a side pocket in the tote she expertly snagged what looked to be a doll’s baby bottle sudsy with milk.
A practiced flip of the wrist and she turned the kitten over on his back, inserting the nipple past tiny milk teeth. A church stillness filled the room.
She looked up at me and said, “We came home last week and found four of these babies lying on our driveway, almost dead from the cold. It was barely above freezing. This little guy,” she said, gesturing to the orange tabby nestled in her lap, “I thought for sure was dead. But I gathered them up, rushed inside and began rubbing them all over with a warm towel. He seemed to have already died so I set him aside and began to work on the others. I heard a tiny squeak and looked around to see him wiggling. That’s why I named him ‘Lucky.’” Cradling kitten and bottle in one hand, she reached down into the folds of the pink bathrobe and pulled out another kitten, a little gray tabby with a snowy chest and four white socks, saying, “Do you want to feed one too?”
Sitting opposite from each other, feeding the kittens no bigger than decks of cards, we began our session speaking in quiet voices so as not to disturb them. A calm stretched between us that was as soft as velvet. While she delicately held the tiny bottle I noticed her knuckles stood out large, the muscles and skin causalities from the wasting quality of cancer drugs and radiation. My client’s peace was evident as she looked down at the kitten while talking about her own fears of dying. “I know no one can tell me how long I have to live. But when I look down at this little creature, I know that what I do matters. I know I’ve done good.” She smiled at me, and I saw twenty years slip away and give me a glimpse of her centered, happy self.
Later that evening I told my family about the kitten I fed during a session; my eight-year-old daughter was smitten and began imploring my husband with her “please” eyes. My husband reminded our daughter we already had a cat, an old fellow set in his ways. Jackie brought the kittens one more time to a session and, with their eyes now open, they explored my office, showing their curiosity by avoiding our laps in favor of nosing around plants and bookcases. Again I told my family how the kittens had walked around the office on legs stiff as little toy soldiers. My girl’s eyes turned again to my husband, “Just one?” she asked. Then I told them that Lucky had died, too damaged for this world after all. My husband hesitated, “Well, maybe one.”
Jackie called the kitten “Lizzie”, but we renamed her “Roxy”. I felt the name had more of a spitfire quality since she had been born mewing on a frozen driveway and now was attacking my bedroom slipper, raking it with fierce slices of her back claws. I brought Roxy home around Easter, but now that the August sun is blazing hot as a baker’s oven, it seems as though the six-month-old kitten has always been with us.
Roxy jumps onto the arm of my chair, as light as a sparrow settling onto a branch and I give her a little hug, placing her on my lap and feeling her purrs rumbling from deep inside her chest. My client is gone, but living in our home is evidence of her love. A little flame has been passed down, giving more love. I can imagine all the love Jackie gave the world, a world where cancer, war, and petty cruelties often frame the reality that life is difficult. But against such a backdrop, when we do come across grace and love, the flame appears to burn a brighter gold because of its gentle nature. These daily acts of compassion can give us faith to go forward, reminding us how to love others, and in so doing, love ourselves. Passing the flame of love may be our gift to soothe us when our body dies and we can hope we made a difference.