Lessons from the Life of a Sixteen Year Old…Learnt in Deep Water

The first thing I notice is that the water is cold. Colder than even two days ago. Perhaps this is good. For I bought into it with me a mesh of thoughts, loosely tied with strands protruding, like Dorothy’s scare crow; straw sticking out like unkept hair.
The cold at least focuses (or interrupts) my thoughts for a little. Noticing it slither down between the layer of neoprene and skin on my arms and torso. Sensing the tingling it causes in my nerve endings. But before long I am back to aggravating myself with plans that are as out of place as hidden jig saw pieces. One after another tumbling through my brain.
I am swimming down the left side of Walden Pond following the thread of sandy beach as it weaves in and out with the shoreline. The wind is pushing me back, at least I feel either it is or I am more sluggish than I anticipated. The lilting and lifting and then letting go as I make my way out past the boat ramp make me believe the first is true and it is not until I am almost at the other end of he pond that the wind lets up and I am swimming through green glass. I realize that up to this point my mind hasn’t relinquished its hold on me so I concentrate on my stroke, allowing the gliding to happen.

I think about Jesi. How can I be letting so many little things aggravate me when even cancer didn’t spoil her ability to smile? I look back into my memory at those last photos of her taken before she left home to spend her last months in this world in hospital. Of course we didn’t know it then but a bone marrow transplant carried its risks…yet she went into it with such courage. She and Kari wrote a bucket list and on that last night at home together went through each item, amending many so they could perform them, laughing and joking as if nothing were at stake. Instead of stealing a street sign they ripped the “Men’s Cave” sign off Chris’s bedroom door and hid it. Instead of having falafel wraps for dinner Kari made Jesi eat spoonfuls of hummus, one of Jesi’s most hated foods. They smashed plates which read “Kill Cancer” and “Down with ED” to chase away their respective demons. And the following morning before Jesi left for hospital I watched her say good bye to each of the family animals. Three cats including her own favorite Tyson. “Take care of my baby for me,” she implored and Mimi our little Shih Tzu whom Jesi and I referred to as “the poddum.” What could have been worse for a sixteen year old after two years of cancer treatment a year of relative health than a relapse?…

Whether it was the cold infusing my brain or whether it was this train of thought, suddenly I seemed to recognize something greater than those petty aggravations I had arrived with.
I saw pictures of Jesi, a four or five year old, happily playing by herself. I remembered her Elementary Vice Principal writing, “Jesi was one of the most loving children I have ever met.” I saw glimpses of her sick, sitting in her hospital bed quietly containing her feelings, asking me if my head was feeling alright, if the migraine had gone, telling Kari she was so happy for her that she could go to fashion art camp, or that perhaps she would be changing schools and going to art school at the end of the year so that when Jesi returned after transplant she and Kari would be at different schools. I saw the selfie she took, the day after she went into hospital that last time where she drew angel wings on her shoulders and wrote, “Look, I’m an angel.” I heard the way she told me time after time “I’m so lucky I have a family that loves me,” as I helped bathe her, so there would be no mistaking that I would know after she passed away that she knew she was loved…

I saw the bigger picture of Jesi’s short life. How she had come here to teach us, how she knew she had to leave but that she did not go without giving us a blueprint by which we could live.

As I was thinking all this, swimming through the mirror green surface at the south end of the pond, all the aggravation I had been feeling, all the niggling irritations I had bought with me from my morning (and yesterday and the yesterday before that) seemed to vanish as I turned to swim back across the enormous body of water toward the main beach.