[originally published in newsletter on 10/14/2025]
My friend is dying and everyone except a rogue lung doctor is doing their job. Well, actually maybe he’s did a different kind of job: he stated plainly her impending death, and provided a little screed about how he gets paid less for intubating people than a burger flipper at McDonald’s. He was a little full of himself (Read the room dude).
My friend is in her 80s, and stuck in bed, with oxygen and IVs and loads of folks monitoring her systems. And she’s a trooper, asking about whats going on while her eyes tell us she is receding. Her family and friends come by all hours and stay even longer. Stories of the everyday fill her hospital room. There is medical talk, sports, and work talk, some politics and funny stories too. She is loved and surrounded by love.
She is also someone you can genuinely call a pillar of the community. And with her withdrawal, some people she’s held up are buckling a touch. It’s natural and it will be okay. Fall, then get up again.
Perhaps this is what happens when an elder goes down: re-sorting and rebirth inside whose rising into that role?
This woman’s life includes teaching in its highest form, taking care of her clan of kids and grand kids, welcoming and directing blow-ins toward worthy work, relaxing into the arts, and keeping a huge multi-generational swath of her community moving forward with special get-togethers, lively education and civics, superior knowledge of history and international news, and delicious food.
She’s someone who knows what we are supposed to do. And she’s done that her whole life: done what she was supposed to do, while providing a bold dose of good trouble too.
She’s walked the talk, and she’s walked when she could barely walk.
Just being around some elders and we know what’s expected. How we’re supposed to live, how we are all supposed to live TOGETHER. How to be good. How to contribute, how to stay out of trouble and how to not be an asshole.
Some in my friend’s circle seem unmoored as she recedes behind her eyes. I know I’ve felt the shift, and I see others going through it too.
Middle aged folks are becoming “it:” those which keep institutions intact and social rules evolving toward the good. Those who stir up good trouble too, righteous and just fights, not selfish bull. Those who raise the young and then show them how it’s done.
Losing a person who holds the “supposed tos” for your community is fierce and frightening. And liberating too. How easy it is to live up to expectations of our elders, OR rail against them. Either way, we are reacting to some belief-and-behavior system, not creating a new one.
That’s the hard work. But it must be done.
As I sat with my sleeping friend, I drew this little fox with two heads. In her (Celtic) culture, foxes are revered as creatures bridging worlds, guiding souls with wisdom, intelligence and adaptability. They are as mythic as they are intelligent.
Like all symbols, they are mysterious and meaningful all at once.
My friend is still watching WMNBC news most days. She’s worried about (and fought for) what’s fair for everyone. She’s feminist who raised a family and worked. She’s non-violent. She supported busses for civil rights and taught progenitors to CRT. She drove around smoking cigarettes with high school kids with hard home lives to help them know they were loved and belong. She broke all the right rules. She leans far left in her politics, and she’ll fight for candidates she believes in. I know, I’ve seen her go.
So, I guess I’ve got an ask for you.
That you join with me to send peaceful energy, with kindness to her family in appreciation of all the amazing things she’s made. And that you, in your community, stand for all the best “supposed to’s” making our places decent and just places of love. And that you stir up the right kind of good trouble too.
With gratitude,
Elizabeth
