Missing a Human
Dear Books,
I lost a human this week. Not just a human, not just any old human, but the very rare and true gift that is an unfailing human. In a world of distrust, mistrust, and failed promises, he was unfaltering.
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Dear Missing a Human,
I’m so very sorry for your loss. It baffles me how it seems like, so often, the good ones are taken from us, and the bad ones get to stay. (I am not supposed to judge, but I do anyway.) I’m sorry your unfailing human is gone because that’s a rare and precious thing to lose.
The book I’m recommending for you is Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing by Anita Moorjani.
Anita’s story is incredible because she stands right there on the doorstep of death and then even enters death’s house for a moment—only to return to her life with the most improbable things like hope and wisdom and joy. Oh, and never mind that her stage-four cancer is totally healed.
This book was an incredible comfort to me as I thought about my own loved ones who had passed. The idea that they might go to the same place Anita had been—that they might feel what she felt and know what she was able to know—comforted my heart in a way I didn’t even know I needed.
From Anita’s perspective, our loved ones are still with us. Maybe not like Patrick Swayze in Ghost, but their energy is still around us. They are rooting for us, cheering us on as we ride the struggle bus through all of it.
Your human is gone. But if Anita is to be believed, not gone gone. Because there is no gone. There is only connected, forever, in a cosmic web that links us all.
Anita’s jaw-dropping story gave me enormous comfort, and I hope it provides that for you, too.
Much love,
Lara
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