I got a haircut today from Win, whose family fled here from Viet Nam when she was a child. Sitting next to me in the salon was a young redhead getting an elaborate updo for an event at her son’s school.

She also said that she has one-year-old twins. I heard her telling the stylist that she has no relatives in town and that it is exhausting to care for twins. She said she had lost all of her hair due to stress postpartum.

She asked me if I had children and I said I had a grown son and that his sister had died of cancer when she was seven. Turns out she is a physician’s assistant. She asked what our daughter died of and I said rhabdomyosarcoma (a solid tumor). She winced as I told her a few details about how people ignored my grief and that some parents lied to their children, saying that Laurie had just moved out of town during the summer.

At that point her stylist said that she had lost her brother in a car accident when she was eleven. Suddenly this turned into a therapy session of sorts for all three of us.

It had a “meant-to-be” feel about it, as the young woman was so kind. I find it easy to write about my losses, but hard to actually talk about it. It feels like a lie on some level, that anyone can actually die! I think this is a survival instinct common to all human beings.

My husband’s death from multiple myeloma happened right after he turned 63. Both died at the end of a seven-year cycle. Undoubtedly, she inherited the gene from his side of the family, as Bob’s father died of multiple myeloma, also at the age of 63.

I have yet to meet anyone that has lost both a child and a spouse to incurable cancers. Being on the path has been a huge help to me. I have abandoned the need for enlightenment, which seems to be an unprovable enterprise. I love Leonard Cohen’s wisdom so much that my last airline trip was to Amsterdam, where he gave the last performance on his European leg of the tour. At age 80 he retired from the road and was dead by the age of 82.

You can see his grave in Montreal online. He was deeply loved; he had charisma, grace, a calling and a knowledge of what is true and what is false. As violence in America heats up, I am reminded of him saying, “You won’t like what comes after America.” I have been pondering this for the last few years. Cohen also said that all of his prophecies had come true. Indeed, America is circling the drain and all we can do is examine our own falseness.

There is always hope, but never for the masses. It takes energy to wake up and we spend our days ignoring the inner manna that falls while we eat from the pig’s trough of society.

What was it Christ said? “Come out from among them.” We are not doing the Hokey Pokey here; we are desperate for a pure drink of water and that water is only found within. Salut!

Vicki Woodyard