When the Water Meets the Light: Linda McClure, April 22, 1953-December 28, 2016

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

Joy is a lake.
Grief is a river.
You can lose yourself in one; be lost in the other.

As this day dawns, we are in the river: swept along in the rapids, sucked under here, dashed on the rocks there, buffeted and battered by grief.

As this day dawns, Lin is in her lake.

In our culture, we say that a person has walked on: It's an expression that deliberately robs death of its fateful power, one that recognizes the sovereignty of the spirit as it moves between the worlds, one that reminds us that our loved ones are not truly gone, merely traveled a distance beyond our current reach.

But to say that Lin has walked on misses the essential truth of her.

A Lake for Lin: Tracing Her Ripples, Telling Their Stories

I first wrote here two weeks ago this morning about the fight my friend faces. Many of you know her better as PDNC, but a great many of you also know her, as I do, as Lin.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about her work, about the water and other aspects of our earth that she has spent a lifetime fighting to protect. I wrote about how grief may be a river in which we can be lost, joy is a lake in which we can lose ourselves willingly. I wrote about wanting to create a lake for Lin: of joy, of hope, of resources that will give her peace of mind in the battle of and for her life. Of love.

This community stepped up and created the beginnings of a miracle: more than $10,000 raised in exactly two weeks flat — and with it, an outpouring of love and support from all quarters for this woman who has been so long a force of nature, like the rapids, and yet such a gentle spirit, like the still waters of the pond that nurtures our willows.

The financial support is so important — indeed, it is crucial. With the funds already raised, her sister Laura was able to buy both the ordinary oxygen concentrator and a portable one lightweight and compact enough for her to carry on visits to doctors and the hospital. She was also able to buy the oxygen for it . . . but there's a caveat or three. Oxygen orders come in a supply of twenty-four tanks. That seems like a lot, especially when the insurance providers consider use of half a tank a day excessive. The cancer in Lin's lungs is widespread and invasive enough that instead, she requires multiple tanks a day just for basic function. Just to breathe.

And so, the fundraising component of this process becomes ever more urgent. Before I get to the heart of today's real request, I want to ask every one of you to share Lin and Laura's crowdfunding page once again. If you can afford to give, even just a few bucks, please do it. These women are our own, and they need help in what is, truly, a matter of life and death. That five dollars you were going to spend at Starbucks this afternoon? It could become part of a real holiday-season miracle:

A Lake for Lin: A Community Fundraiser for an Eco-Warrior In the Fight of Her Life

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

Joy is a lake.

Grief is a river.

You can lose yourself in one; be lost in the other.

I wrote those words on the first day of this month. Then, I had no idea how soon I would have reason to understand, yet again, the essential truth of them.

Some people are like the water: Buoyant. They hold you up by the sheer force and fierceness of the their own spirits. They are forces of nature, a constant ebb and flow, eddy and tide, and they give life just be being present.

And it's not until you are cast fully into the drought that you realize how much life they give you.

Photo credit:  Lin McClure

My friend Lin is one of these people.

She is, in her way, a warrior too: one for Mother Earth, for the land and the air and, yes, the waters that she and I both hold sacred. She is sister and friend and force of nature. And like the earth she has fought so fiercely for decades to defend, she is in the fight of her life.

For her life.