My friend Eve Marko, the writer, blogger, Zen Teacher and social activist drove up in the rain from Massachusetts home for lunch. Eve is a remarkable person, and one of the strongest and most accomplished women I have known. I am lucky to call her my friend.

She is far too humble and modest to describe herself in that way.

I love talking with Eve, and so does Maria.

Eve reminds me of the great moral philosopher Hannah Arendt, my moral conscience.

She has the same depth of intelligence and a fierce sense of social justice.

She is grieving.

Eve has devoted much of her life to supporting the needy and the vulnerable, she has been writing about her life and her grief on her blog, Eve Marko.

Today, she told me and Maria the story of a famous Native American medicine woman who surprised her friends by writing on her blog one day “What About Me?”  a cry for attention.

Eve was astonished at the strength and daring if must have taken for an accomplished woman to write something that bold and revealing. It affected her deeply.

And I, of course, asked her if she could ever write those words, and said no, she didn’t think so. But she couldn’t stop talking about what a remarkable thing it was for her Medicine Person friend, who she greatly admired, to have said.

She said she knew no one of her friend’s accomplishment who would ever say a thing like that in public or put it out there on social media.

What about you?, I asked. She shook her head no, out of the question. She worried about how other people might react.

We argued about that a bit in our quiet and respectful way. I told Eve that in 25 years of teaching writing, I have never heard a man express fear of being authentic, only women. Even the strongest and most gifted women seem to be taught that their ideas and words need to be hidden, they need to be careful.

Tonight, I read her latest blog post, it was one of her most moving and powerful. She told me about this column, which she wrote yesterday, but she said she hadn’t posted it yet.

I saw it tonight.

We went back and forth about why she couldn’t make that statement herself, and in her own way. Eve is a listener, even when she doesn’t agree.

She makes up her own mind about everything, and in her own time.

But she is always thinking.

The blog post is centered, as so many of her pieces are, around conversations between her two dogs Harry and Aussie who mostly talk about her and who reveal things about Eve that she is not yet comfortable revealing in her own voice and identity.

Dogs are a useful place for writers to hide, they are always eager to be  useful to their humans. I told Eve she could say the things the dogs are saying herself one day if she wished. Her eyes widened when I said that.

In the column, Harry asks Aussie – these are her two dogs – why she’s walking so slowly  behind them, and Aussie responds: “She’s back in the Land of SOD.”

Where’s that, asks Harry?

“The Land of Sickness, Old Age and Death is nowhere and everywhere, Harry.” At some point in the conversation, Aussie explains of Eve, “She’s not getting any younger. If she doesn’t start living now, what’s going to happen later: The hummingbirds are starting to go?”

She’s missing out, says one of the dogs.
“Soon, the flowers will go, then the other birds, then the creek will get cold and I won’t want to splash in it anymore with her.”

Eve is a private person, and it was not,  an easy thing for her to write that column. It is as bleak and beautiful a characterization of grief as anything Joan Didion or anyone else has written about grief and loss. She is saying she is sad, walking slowly in the fog of loss and grief.

Eve is using her dogs – I know this device, although I rarely use it anymore – to say things she doesn’t yet want or dare to say herself. I pointed this out to her today, that she doesn’t need the dogs to talk about the land of SOD or her own evolution.

I said nothing is more liberating for a writer than authenticity and truth, people were hungry for it. A true writer almost always ends up telling the truth,  in one form or medium or another, it is their salvation and reason for being.

Grieving is so personal, and for some people, grief is so painful and all-encompassing that they don’t know that it will ever end, it is so hard to see beyond the pain and the sadness. It reminds me of my panic attacks, no one could ever persuade me while I was in one that I would come out of it.

But what I have sometimes seen and believe is that when people begin talking of moving forward, they have usually begin the process. Self-awareness, I have learned, is the engine that often drives us out of pain and fear.

Eve does not have the social media disease of using a blog or Facebook page to seek out pity. It’s quite obvious she doesn’t want or need that any more than I do. I would never tell Eve that I am sorry for her grief.

Nor does she need anyone else to tell her about grieving. When people write with as much honesty and self-awareness about grief as Eve’s dogs were discussing, then that is the path to healing. I wouldn’t expect her to see the light on the other side, it will reveal itself.

Eve knows just where she is, and she has already begun planning for new kinds of work, for resuming her social activism, for her Native-American work, her groundbreaking work at the Greyston Open Hiring movement in the Bronx. (Eve’s husband Bernie Glassman was one of Greyson’s founders, Eve worked there, they met there.)

Her spirit is on the move, I don’t know if she knows it or not, her eyes were full of sadness today. She is far too restless to stay in any one place for too long?

Doing good is Eve’s passion, and there are few things more healing than that.

And why not go back to the land of SOD when she needs to?

Glassman died last year after a severe stroke. Apart from everything else, taking care of Bernie was Eve’s life for three hard years, day and night. She can visit any land she wants.

Eve has the kind of mind that will not dwell longer than necessary in the land of SOD. She will not be a permanent citizen of that world. It sounds like the dogs know it.

Her column today was a landmark piece of writing for her, it marks a passage in  her life.

I could not help but hear the shout from Eve, loud and clear, put right in Aussie’s mouth:

“What About Me?“