The Trip of a Lifetime

What a treat. Wow.

We’re here, y’all. We’re here.

Seven years ago, I was not here. I was in Cuba.

I woke up in a little town called Trinidad, right in the center of the island. It’s the third-oldest town in Cuba.

I woke up somewhere on that center line between drunk and hungover. And if you’ve been there, you know that line well. It’s a really delicate balance.

I also woke up late. I was panicked because I had a bus to catch.

I had been partying all night with a woman I’d met just a few hours earlier. We partied in a limestone cave, stayed out way too late, and drank all the rum.

Because, young and free, I was having the time of my life.

But it was time for me to move on, or at least I thought it was the right day.

So I gathered my things and hit the road.

As I was running through the streets, a car almost hit me. I slammed my hands on the hood and sobbed, “Girl, get it together. Please don’t die out here in these streets.”

How embarrassing would that be?

Like, my mom would have to say, “Yeah, she died drunk in the street, and she was not cute.”

I mean, I can be messy, but that’s way too messy for me.

So I got it together and made my way to the bus stop.

When I arrived, a woman in line told me I was waiting in the wrong place for the bus I wanted. So I got into the right line, and she took care of my bags.

I watched her try to gather all of our bags together and get them onto the bus. It made absolutely no sense, so I watched, really curious about what she was up to.

Eventually, I made it onto the bus and sat down.

She said, “I made a total fool of myself for you.”

I said, “I really appreciate it, girl.”

So we started having a great conversation.

I met Jessica. She was 36 years old and traveling to see the six places in the world she most wanted to visit before she died, because Jessica had uterine cancer.

I asked Jessica a lot of questions about her life. And then I started asking her a lot of questions about her death.

When she talked about her trip, it felt like the trip was an act of resistance to death rather than an embrace of life.

It’s a really subtle difference, but it was evident in her language.

Because I recognized that resistance, I started asking what she was resisting.

What are you afraid of?

What happens if this is the disease that kills you?

What meaning will your life’s work have had if this is what ends your life at 36?

Realistically, those were questions I should have been asking myself.

I was on medical leave from work, and that’s how I ended up on this trip in Cuba. I had depression, a deep, dark, clinical depression.

I had been practicing law for 10 years at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, a wonderful organization.

I went there initially because I’m an activist by nature. I’m like, “Go get it. Burn it down. Let’s change this entire thing.”

It lives in my bones. I can’t help it.

So Legal Aid was a great place for my enterprising, activist, legally educated self to go.

It was great for a while.

And then I started losing that fire. I started losing that passion.

My body began to feel like an empty house with only the tiniest pinprick of light and life left inside it.

There was nothing left.

All that remained was an emptiness, a space begging to be filled by something.

In retrospect, that depression was a wake-up call from my spirit.

“Girl, get it together. Girl, get it together. Girl, get it together.”

But I couldn’t hear it. I had made myself so busy moving around this earth.

In Cuba, I finally started to listen.

I listened to Jessica’s answers and asked myself the same questions.

Because realistically, let’s keep it all the way real, depression is a life-limiting illness when it’s left untreated.

I was on the exact same path she was.

We spent 14 hours together on that bus. Jessica was supposed to get off after seven, but she stayed on with me.

We got off in Santiago de Cuba, on the eastern side of the island. We went together to the guest house I had rented and drank some more rum, because my liver clearly had not yet had enough.

I was working hard. My liver was just begging for more.

We drank more rum, listened to the Backstreet Boys, danced, and had a really good time together.

Finally, it was time to go to bed.

She looked at me very seriously and said, “I hope this isn’t weird or anything.”

That is certainly not something you want to hear from a stranger you’ve just brought into your guest house in a foreign country, right?

She said, “I hope this isn’t weird or anything, but do you remember when that car almost hit you?”

I said, “Yeah.”

But I was wondering how she knew, because I hadn’t met her yet.

It turns out Jessica was in that car.

Every single time I tell that story, I get goosebumps, which I’m now calling juice bumps because they’re so juicy.

I get goosebumps every time because, without knowing it, I was on a direct collision course with what would become my life’s work.

At the time, I wasn’t looking for purpose. I wasn’t looking for meaning.

On that bus, I remember having a very clear thought.

If everybody is going to die, which we are, whether you like the hypothesis or not, then we should be preparing for it.

Since we’re going to die, we should be preparing for it.

Who are the people who prepare other people for the fact that they’re going to die?

Why doesn’t Jessica have anybody?

Why is she having these conversations for the first time with an absolute stranger?

I realized then that maybe I could do that.

I was really curious about it. Maybe this was something I could do.

I wasn’t looking for meaning. I wasn’t looking for purpose.

I was just following my curiosity, following that bliss, following that little spark I felt, which I hadn’t felt in so long.

Eventually, I came back to the States.

I should tell you now, spoiler alert, Jessica lives. She’s in Scotland, studying and living her best life.

Yeah, she lives.

I came back to the States and fumbled around, trying to figure out what to do with this feeling.

It was the first thing I had felt in such a long time. I was so happy to feel something, but I had nowhere appropriate to put it.

I applied to some programs. I got in. I didn’t say yes.

I just kept waiting and waiting and waiting, trying to figure out what to do with myself.

About six months later, my brother-in-law fainted at the birthday party of my niece, Lia. She was turning four.

A week later, he was diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma.

I visited him shortly after his diagnosis. When I returned home, my mom asked how he was doing.

I just shook my head.

It was clear to me that Peter was not going to survive the illness.

Sure enough, about four months later, the doctors were saying a version of the same thing.

They were saying, “Well, we could still try. Maybe we can. What about his kidneys? Maybe we should.”

And I was like, “This sounds a lot like he’s not going to live.”

He’s not going to live.

Peter died on December 11, 2013, at 3:44 in the morning, just four days shy of his 44th birthday.

You never forget days like that, do you?

That was one of those seminal days in my life when I finally saw what the system actually looks like. What the real-deal Holyfield looks like for people walking through this.

And it wasn’t pretty.

We were alone. We were isolated.

Yet this was happening to hundreds of thousands of people across the globe at the same time.

Why did it feel like we were the only ones going through it?

Where were the people who were supposed to support us?

I learned a lot about myself during that time.

Mostly, I started to see where I shine.

It’s weird. Grief has this funny little way of breaking me wide open. And in my wide openness, I started seeing myself for who I had actually become.

I saw all the gifts, skills, and talents I had, and where they could best be used.

I’m going to be totally honest with you. I’m a very emotional person.

Okay?

I love a good cry. Just dig the tears. I cry a lot. I feel things deeply.

I’m also very sensitive and easily affected.

But I can take in a lot of information, whittle it down to the most important details, and put it back out.

I have law school to thank for that.

And my loans.

I’m still paying for that. God bless them.

All of those things in combination helped me see that, even though there were a lot of emotions, I was really comfortable in emotional depth.

I could navigate the system and still see what needed to be done.

Since we were the only ones there, and we were having such a hard time doing it, I thought, how great would it be to have skilled, compassionate, kind people who could walk us through this process?

A lot of times in my work, I go immediately to the foundational question:

What must I do to be at peace with myself so that I may live presently and die gracefully?

What must I do?

What must I do?

This is not permissive. It is absolutely mandatory.

What must I do to be at peace with myself so that I may live presently and die gracefully?

The answer varies for every single one of us.

But in my work, I’ve learned that there are a few things that really support people in getting clear about what those answers are.

For many people, it’s first about healing their relationships.

They consider whom they loved, how they loved, and whether they were loved.

When placing yourself on your deathbed, it’s important to look around and see who surrounds you.

What is the current state of your relationship with those people?

What is your relationship with the people around your deathbed?

For a lot of people, it’s also about getting their affairs in order.

Fun paperwork.

I’m not just talking about wills and trusts. I’m also talking about advance directives and advance planning.

Make sure the passwords are written down. Make sure people know how to access the retirement accounts, storage units, sentimental items, and things like that.

For others, it’s about creating the deathbed.

This is where it gets really juicy.

Since we all have to do it, what is your ideal way to die?

Who’s there?

What does it smell like?

What’s the last thing you tasted?

What do you hear?

What fabric is against your skin?

Are your feet lotioned?

Are you wearing lipstick, like my mother will be?

For other people, it’s about exploring consciousness and ideas about the afterlife.

Okay, I’m going to tell you a little secret.

What I’ve learned in my practice is that even the most religious among us start questioning what lies after death.

Ooh, tricky.

Here’s why: beliefs remain beliefs until they’re tested.

When they’re tested, we have some evidence.

And right there on the deathbed, they’re about to be tested, because you’re about to find out real quick what’s on the other side, right?

So people are like, “Um, I think. Wait. No. Maybe not.”

We’re all going to find out one way or another.

For other people, it’s about the unfinished business of living.

That’s the big category.

Go to Machu Picchu. Drink that bottle of wine from France. Taste the milkshake from that corner store near your childhood home.

All the things left undone in life.

I’ve been training death doulas for a while now, which is super fun.

And we always bring it back to who we have become through everything we’ve learned.

Our experiences with death are certainly our experiences with life.

Our gifts. Our skills. Our talents.

Who are we?

Who have you become during this ride of life?

And really, that’s the overarching question inside this big question:

What version of yourself do you want to meet on your deathbed?

What version of yourself are you right now?

And what’s in the gap?

What’s missing?

I want to tell you a quick story about a client I had recently.

We’re going to call her Joy, because death doula ethics are a real thing.

Thank you to the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance, NEDA, for creating doula ethics standards.

Joy was 66 years old.

We spent a lot of time talking about her life. We spent a lot of time preparing and doing all the business stuff.

Once that was finished, all that remained was the really juicy, interesting stuff.

At one point, she had a tumor.

I asked her about that tumor. I said, “What do you think this tumor is about?”

Permission had already been granted to go there.

She looked me dead in the eye and said, “This tumor came to remind me that I am a dynamic and resplendent human being.”

What?

Yes, girl. Yes. Yes.

Joy was answering for her life because of her death.

She used her death to gain insight into what her life could and should have been.

That opportunity is available to all of us, all the time, to reconcile the deathbed version of ourselves with today’s version.

It’s just up to us.

The choice remains.

The choice remains, and the answer is yours.

My answer took that bus ride in Cuba and coming face to face with who I had become through all of my life’s experiences.

I reached the point where I knew that, on my deathbed, I wanted to arrive having lived fully in this body.

No longer just a pinprick of life, but fully in this body.

Having used every last bit of skill, gift, and talent I’ve been given, using it in service of others.

Fully in service of others.

So that I can reach the end of my life gracefully, knowing that I was here.

Without a shadow of a doubt, I was fully, fully, fully here.

I was here.

I was here.

What’s your answer?

Thank you so much for giving me 14 minutes of your life