Aside from a few mind-bending phone calls, these are the last exchanges I had with Corinna. I think a lot of people are dumbstruck at how swiftly death came for her — and are feeling, as we often do when we lose someone, that we failed. Corinna would want the people she cared about to feel something more. I’m sharing this because her last words to me were for everyone: “I appreciate that everyone has their own pace and form of meeting me where I am right now. It’s ok.” The last time we talked, some weeks ago, she said her doc had — reluctantly — given her several months. I don’t remember the number, but it was big enough that I didn’t feel like I needed to do the math. Seeing her was important, maybe a bit urgent, but it wasn’t an emergency. I’d planned to give her a shout on Tues AM to see if we could meet when I passed through the city, but Benoit called to give me the news. Cancers are famously mercurial, but even a throwaway truism like that implicitly casts Corinna as passive, a victim. She suffered terribly, but suffering has another sense too, like the saying that someone doesn’t suffer fools lightly: Corinna didn’t suffer illness lightly. From the moment she made her condition public, she was fiercely protective of the integrity of her own experience. She said, and not much politely than this: f*ck your heartwarming anecdotes about so-and-so’s cousin, f*ck your “you got this, girl” BS, and f*ck all the well-meaning, ham-handed clichés we’re taught to respond with. Part of me wonders whether she may have, let’s say, amplified how much time her doctor estimated as a way to turn time into space — space for herself to be and feel, and space for others to do the same. That would be very Corinna in general. And in the specific, too. The last time we talked, she told me about the gifted body workers she’d found, including one who’d left her feeling that her entire being was, if I remember rightly, in her tongue. I joked she was becoming Carlos Castaneda (and was surprised to learn she’d never taken any psychedelics), but it wasn’t a joke: she brought a relentless intensity and clarity to everything she did. Everything. And that, as much as she’d let anyone else see, was how she approached death. She’d experienced some transformative moments, and she knew — she said — a point would come when that opening, that sharpening even, would give way to a kind of closing: meds that would dull her senses, dull her mind, dull her world. I could say she wouldn’t let that happen, but even those few words are awash in a passivity has no business in any sentence where she’s the subject. I think she may have reached that point and, somehow, embraced death. So, rather than feel regret that we failed to see her one last time, there’s another way to digest it — as a gift, from her to us, a way to keep our promises rather than fulfill them. I don’t know whether that’s true, but I’m pretty sure I can hear what she’d say: “YES!!!” — with that hilarious mix, always with joy, usually with a tinge of relief, and sometimes with a hint of frustration. Take a few moments to listen across your memories for all the times and ways she said that one word. Aside from a few mind-bending phone calls, these are the last exchanges I had with Corinna. I think a lot of people are dumbstruck at how swiftly death came for her — and are feeling, as we often do when we lose someone, that we failed. Corinna would want the people she cared about to feel something more. I’m sharing this because her last words to me were for everyone: “I appreciate that everyone has their own pace and form of meeting me where I am right now. It’s ok.”
The last time we talked, some weeks ago, she said her doc had — reluctantly — given her several months. I don’t remember the number, but it was big enough that I didn’t feel like I needed to do the math. Seeing her was important, maybe a bit urgent, but it wasn’t an emergency. I’d planned to give her a shout on Tues AM to see if we could meet when I passed through the city, but Benoit called to give me the news.
Cancers are famously mercurial, but even a throwaway truism like that implicitly casts Corinna as passive, a victim. She suffered terribly, but suffering has another sense too, like the saying that someone doesn’t suffer fools lightly: Corinna didn’t suffer illness lightly. From the moment she made her condition public, she was fiercely protective of the integrity of her own experience. She said, and not much politely than this: f*ck your heartwarming anecdotes about so-and-so’s cousin, f*ck your “you got this, girl” BS, and f*ck all the well-meaning, ham-handed clichés we’re taught to respond with.
Part of me wonders whether she may have, let’s say, amplified how much time her doctor estimated as a way to turn time into space — space for herself to be and feel, and space for others to do the same. That would be very Corinna in general. And in the specific, too. The last time we talked, she told me about the gifted body workers she’d found, including one who’d left her feeling that her entire being was, if I remember rightly, in her tongue. I joked she was becoming Carlos Castaneda (and was surprised to learn she’d never taken any psychedelics), but it wasn’t a joke: she brought a relentless intensity and clarity to everything she did. Everything. And that, as much as she’d let anyone else see, was how she approached death.
She’d experienced some transformative moments, and she knew — she said — a point would come when that opening, that sharpening even, would give way to a kind of closing: meds that would dull her senses, dull her mind, dull her world. I could say she wouldn’t let that happen, but even those few words are awash in a passivity has no business in any sentence where she’s the subject. I think she may have reached that point and, somehow, embraced death.
So, rather than feel regret that we failed to see her one last time, there’s another way to digest it — as a gift, from her to us, a way to keep our promises rather than fulfill them. I don’t know whether that’s true, but I’m pretty sure I can hear what she’d say: “YES!!!” — with that hilarious mix, always with joy, usually with a tinge of relief, and sometimes with a hint of frustration. Take a few moments to listen across your memories for all the times and ways she said that one word.