Ellen and "The Way It Works"

I have turned comments back on because Jac, who was part of that wonderful Staithes Blipmeet a year ago, pointed out that by turning comments off I silence everyone. Not my intention. I am humbled and grateful for all the silent stars and muffled hearts for my blip of June 6. Thank you. Slowly the migraine is easing off after three intense days of brain pounding, but the few photographs I took on June 7 are not up to snuff, so tonight I’m posting this backblip taken Saturday, of Ellen Goldberg. 

Ellen is a poet, Buddhist, therapist, and humanitarian activist, and she has been one of Sue’s closest friends since they met in the 1970s. Over the past few decades, despite coping with MS and working full-time as a therapist at a child abuse center, Ellen has, along with her partner (who also gets migraines), facilitated support groups for people with cancer. Now Ellen has cancer herself, in addition to MS, and she’s in the midst of very aggressive chemotherapy. And yet she goes on writing her way through cancer with characteristic humor and truthfulness. This poem is dated June 1st, and she posted it just before celebrating her sixty-seventh birthday, which is when I took this photograph of her. I think she looks more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her--radiant, vibrant, and full of moxie. If it is possible to vanquish this cancer, she will do it.


The Way It Works
Ellen Goldberg
  
Some say it’s reincarnation
and wonder which
creature they’ll return to be
 
maybe a baby-faced kit fox
or a blur of a bird
like a hummer
 
some say we’ll simply be one
with the dirt and some say,
realistically, who knows?
 
You, my love, are worried about
how you’ll survive
without me. One
 
December night after my Dad
was suddenly dead, I showed-off,
danced a goofy heel-toe shuffle step
 
for my broken mother.
She lifted her head from her hands
and screamed like she wanted to kill me.
 
Who will hover in the living room
to cheer you up?
We don’t believe
 
it’ll be a better me
back as a ballerina,
do we?
 
Whoever it is, I know
you’ll tilt your big round head
and say something kind.