Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [165]
There might have been some who would have quit reading, who would have been overwhelmed by the pain, the grief, the misery. I thought instead of the Chinese parable about the mustard seed. A woman’s son dies, and she is inconsolable. She carries his body in her arms to the temple and demands that the priest find a way to restore his life and banish this grief. He will do that, he says, if she will go to all the houses in her village and bring back a mustard seed. She starts to set off, but he stops her. The house in which you find the mustard seed must be a house with no grief. With her son draped across her arms, she goes from house to house. Time and again she finds mustard seeds, but in each house she also finds grief. Finally, exhausted, she returns with her son to the temple. She understands, and she lays his body down. I had already visited these houses, I already knew there was grief. These were not strangers writing me, these were my companions, and I welcomed their conversation as we walked together.
And there were gifts. I have such a splendid library of books on cancer now. Whenever I got a duplicate book, I would leave one in the waiting room of the clinic with a note that anyone who wanted could take it home. I lived a lifetime believing that the reason the words are in a book is that they be shared, and now I was doing that, because they had been shared with me. When a cap to cover my bald head was too small, I passed it on, and now I have passed on almost all those I wore—and I had a great collection—to the women behind me on this path, saving just a few to remind me of the journey. There were bracelets from Elizabeth and Jenzi, from Donna, Jo, and Helene. There were contributions to breast cancer research groups and clinics. There were contributions to the Wade Edwards Foundation, which runs the learning labs. It is impossible to list them all and impossible to leave any single one out. But the ornaments will hang on my Christmas tree, the quilts will adorn our chairs and beds, the books are on our shelves, and all of those hundreds and hundreds of people who thought to spend a few moments thinking of us will be with us always.
There were two very special gifts. Henry Walentowicz, with whom John and I went to law school, and his beautiful wife, Karina, gave me a rosary they had gotten from Pope John Paul II. I did not know how to accept it, though I wanted to, and I didn’t know how to return such a lovely gesture. It sits by my bedside now. The second gift is hardly one gift, but hundreds of gifts—started by a single generous soul. John had a supporter whose screen name on the campaign blog was Lilfroggy. When I was diagnosed, Lilfroggy created a website, PrayersforElizabeth.org, so that people from around the country—around the world, in fact—could have a place to post their best wishes, to send out that thread of support. Those threads made each day easier for me. While I was concentrating on my family and my extended campaign family and the circle of people closest to me, a whole unimaginably large community was forming to hold me up and boost my spirits. Someone told me about the website, and I would visit and read and be cheered. Lilfroggy enlisted Julie Simon, who turned the website into a booklet, which she sent me and that I cherish, a collection of affectionate threads and posts. I read every word. If I felt bad after a restless night, I would find the website, and once I had the book I would read that too, and I would remember how much my success in this battle meant to people I didn’t even know. They had seen me briefly on the campaign trail, or, like Ben and Alexander, had seen me on C-SPAN, or had never seen me at all. I think every person who watched me at a town hall in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, wrote—and mentioned it.