santos scribes

when it became clear the cancer was going to be the thing to kill her; that the slow growing malignancy in her brain was going to be the thing to carry her away from us, from her body, from the beautiful life she’d created, she booked and kept her annual reservation at a yoga retreat in Costa Rica anyway.

Her personal paradise she called it.

At Logan International, she boarded a plane for San Jose even though she was traveling alone and she sometimes felt unsteady on her feet now. Even though Mal Pais* was all sand and soft roads. She went anyway and left me a voice message from a tiny room in the airport there in the capital city.

She told me she was feeling a little down after receiving her most recent MRI results; her doctors had registered a noticeable lag time in her left arm and leg. Nevertheless, she was happy to be waiting for her puddle jumper South, she told me, and I believed her because my darling friend was never one to dwell long on the things outside of her control, ever.

She assured me, this trip, the perfect, salty Pacific water and air would “do her spirit good” and despite everything she was still up for “this” whatever “this” would turn out to be. 

After she’d been home a week, we spoke by phone. It had been harder than she thought it’d be- giving up her surfboard, accepting the extra help she now needed. She confided in me that she’d never felt shaky or unsteady in the water before, not like this. Never not been able to trust her body and her brain to work together to keep her safe, to keep her swimming.

We were both quiet then, taking the finality of her newest reality in.

Always a fixer, always with something to say, I took a deep breath unsure of what might come from my mouth next. There had always been an otherworldly connectedness between us and in this tight, tender moment, it was that most vibrant energy that found us again-

Maybe we were always returning to our most natural state (and obviously hers was water). Maybe as she lay there floating in the masterful Pacific unable to surf or swim confidently, only able now to lean in to becoming whatever it is we become next, she was becoming water.

This isn’t a thought I’d remembered thinking before that moment, and I don’t speak for her when I say I felt a sliver of clarity & comfort after its utterance.  

If this were any one of the 45 Junes of our darling Sarah’s life and especially one of the Junes in the second half of her life, she would perhaps be at this very moment preparing for another hard-working summer with the sand & surf, the salt and the sea water peppered in. Here in June 2025, the sixth June since she made her departure from here for there, every ocean and each lake still brims & breathes of her.  

about this writing

I think of my beloved Sarah often and especially as spring slips to summer. The * above after Mal Pais is to make clear I do not remember the name of the town Sarah’s retreat was in in Costa Rica but Mal Pais is a town I spent some time in once some twenty years ago now; I like to think of us there together in some way. thanks for reading xo, S.