I am pondering what it all means, as I do every day. My thoughts turn to two people that had a brief but indelible influence on me. Both were taken by cancer before I got to know them in depth.

The first is Patrice Dickey. She, like me, had lived in Memphis, was interested in Vernon Howard and was also a writer. She befriended me instantly, bought 5 copies of my first book and invited Rob and I to events in her home. At first, she did not tell me that she had breast cancer. I think she was hopeful of beating it and wanted to stay positive.

We came to her house again when she had a group of friends over. I knew she had chosen to have breast implants removed because they were giving her problems. But that night she was bright and alive. I hung out in her kitchen; she had the most marvelous brick ranch home. She had added a flight of steps going into her backyard. People were gathering around a fire pit; it was January. I remember walking down the steep steps and almost falling. They were slippery with rain that had fallen.

Nine months went by and on a Sunday morning I opened the newspaper. There I saw her photo on the obituary page. Her cancer had spread to the bone and she lived her last weeks out in a nursing home. Friends say she left her body consciously, not wanting to endure the pain anymore.

With great sorrow her friends gave her a moving service at the church she loved. There were old gospel songs and true stories told about her by her friends. Her boyfriend sat behind us in a pew across the aisle. They had recently broken up and he seemed lost and small. We were all devastated.

Soon after that memorial service, her sister held an estate sale at her home, her home that she told me was a portal. “I even wrote that into the concrete under the house,” she had told me. It said “Patrice’s Portal.” It was a memorable afternoon. There we were, one last time, moving among memories of Patrice.

Here is what I chose to buy. A watercolor of yellow roses, a ceramic frog with a crown on his head, a magnificent hand-thrown bowl that sits on my coffee table. An old school desk that she had repurposed as a night table. Oh, and a small oriental vase that a friend said held one of her cat’s ashes!

She had this remarkably eclectic taste. I watched people leave with stained glass art, framed oils, just so many fantastically personal things. What we all took home was a piece of Patrice. I read a poem at her memorial service that I had written. It was about a hummingbird. She had visited me once and gifted me with a hummingbird wind chime that hangs in my bedroom. She was a poem herself, a comet, a lasting tribute to the power of the Self. Several people felt her presence after her death and some dreamed of her. I was one of those.