How Now Courage

(In memoriam: Katherine Russell Rich)

What does it take to summon our courage, to take the risk to grasp our authenticity? By authenticity, I mean the purpose for our existence. Not what someone else determines for us, but what we define for ourselves. To ask and listen to the answer: Am I doing what I’m supposed to do, what I really want to do in this life time? 

The voice of authenticity may be spoken in our hearts and minds in sotto voce.  One has to listen closely and pay attention. Hearing and heeding this voice is not easy. Many of us go through life denying its existence. We bury the answer in excuses because we’re afraid of the consequences: we may disappoint someone, or ourselves; we may fail or go hungry.

Jerry, a thirty year old journalist, moved to New York City to become a psychotherapist.  It took twenty years when he turned fifty, to admit that he hadn’t followed his plan. Now he acknowledged the brevity of time and he couldn’t procrastinate anymore.

 Katherine Russell Rich wrote in an Oprah Magazine essay, “When I was told I was going to die, I was shredded to realize I hadn’t made any real difference (as an editor)….the life of a writer was uncertain, but as a writer, it seemed, I might leave a mark.”

Kathy’s breast cancer first appeared when she was 32 years old. In spite of treatment, it returned seven years later as Stage 4-the most advanced stage possible having spread to her spine, breaking her bones and leaving her temporarily paralyzed. She was told she would live a year or two at most. But Kathy was a fighter.

At that turning point, further treatment gave her the courage to quit editing and become a writer.

 Her memoir The Red Devil: To Hell with Cancer and Back described her odyssey through the treatments and inspired fellow cancer patients.  

Later she said her treatments and ‘pugnacious engagement’ with her illness gave her the fortitude to move to India for a year to learn Hindi and to recount in a second memoir, Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language, published in 2009.

She accepted all the treatment which delayed the cancer’s  progress, but ultimately killed her Tues, April 3^rd at the age of 56.

I had the good fortune to experience her tutelage twice at a conference on Publishing Books sponsored by Harvard Medical School under the expert direction of Julie Silver, M.D. .

Kathy was a generous,  encouraging mentor, yet constructively critical, a rare and admirable combination of qualities.  (The opposite style of tortuous game-playing  is embodied  in Seminar by Theresa Rebeck, currently on  Broadway; Leonard,  a celebrity teacher, incorporates a broad streak of sadism in his instruction of  four aspiring novelists.)

             

The second time I benefitted from her instruction, in April  a year ago, Kathy appeared frail. Her lackluster dark hair was sparse and dry. She required a cane and navigated with a bad limp. Her voice emanated from her constricted throat with a strained, low-pitched whisper. In spite of her physical limitations and obvious physical discomfort, she delivered an excellent lecture on Memoir and presided over two seminars with groups of about ten of us. She had read our work and written encouraging comments on each submission beforehand.

At the conference’s end, I headed back to New York and by coincidence

caught a glimpse of Kathy at the Back Bay  train station.  Propped on the bare wooden bench in the cold, damp building, she sat alone, reading. She seemed to be in a state of deep peace. I offered to help her lug her little suitcase down to the train platform; she thanked me but refused, saying she could manage.

Many of us live denying the reality of our mortality. I’ve seen people overpowered by fear who deal for years with psychological symptoms caused by an inability to confront the subject. I have witnessed people incapable of expressing gratitude or turning over their fortune to their loved ones who have sacrificed for them. 

(For me this brings up the theme of the Impossibility of our Human condition: to acknowledge our finite existence and deal with it constructively, may be our most difficult task.)

Kathy was a gifted writer, a magnificent mentor, and a woman of remarkable courage.  I sing praise for her and her life of accomplishment.

CONCLUSION: To embrace a life of authenticity and confront our mortality are heroic accomplishments. 

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)