I asked Susan a few days ago why she moved upstate, and she said without hesitating, “it was you and Maria and your farm. There was so much warmth and creativity there that I wanted to try and live in that way, to be around it.”

This shocked me to the core.

I didn’t believe it when she said it; I have a hard time believing it now.

A friend of Susan from Long Island wrote to me to say this was so, Susan came back from our Open House and said she was so moved by the visit she wanted to move to the country and rebuild her love.

She was, she said, lonely and depressed then.

I can’t see myself as someone so inspiring that people would move because of me. I don’t think I’ll ever believe that, and in a way, I hope I don’t ever believe it. We are just people here, like people anywhere.

One thing I am learning now is that there are so many ways to say goodbye.

Susan is a love story in many ways, and she shows us that there are different kinds of love, and also that love is seen and taught in many different ways.

Some people send cards; others write heartfelt messages of hope, some send flowers. Some pray. There is no right way to love. Everybody does it in their own way.

One woman has been messaging me almost desperately every day, insisting that we play Grateful Dead music for Susan, that, she said, is the music Susan wants to hear. (The music she wanted to hear most was Van Morrison. The only music I ever heard her listen to up here were Broadway Show Tunes).

But thinking of her and music was also an act of love.

(Donna played the Grateful Dead for Susan this morning, she said she was sure that she heard it.)

Friends from work came by to set up a pristine well-organized writing desk next to her bed, and they also taped up scores of messages and cards on the far wall of her hospital room.

When I saw this, I was irritated, then puzzled, Susan can’t sit up to write letters, and she can’t see across her darkened room to read or even see the letters. Why would it be comforting to see things you can’t do or even see?

But it is comforting, I think, it is an act of love. And sometimes, we have to show love for us, not only them.

This was a lovely gesture in its way; love is not so finite and bounded; it can be felt and seen in so many different ways. Just seeing that some cares is a gift.

It took love and concern to write and put up those cards and send those flowers.

Love can be indirect, sensed, and absorbed. It makes sense to me that the more love there is in a room, the more comfort and peace for the dying. It can fill up a room like a warm and misty cloud.

Susan’s friend Donna has a natural way of showing love; it is a part of her; she knows how to do it. She holds Susan’s hand and talks to her, comforts her. You can feel the love across the room.

Sometimes you can feel it even when you can’t see it.

Some people show their love by writing nasty messages about her or me, demanding that Susan be seen in this way or that.

That is love also.

For me, showing love is complicated. I never saw much of it; I never really learned how to do it. My love of Maria is teaching me about it, as is hers for me.

I am somewhat awkward in the hospital room. Hospice teaches Active Listening, which is comfortable for me, so it is what I do.

I take Susan’s hand when I come into the room, and when I leave it. I read a story or a poem. I tell her she is free in a way; she can let go if she wishes. I read her some of the messages people send me wishing her well and praying for peace for her.

I feel the best and most helpful when I just show up, there needn’t be something for me to do. I notice visitors raise their voices as if talking to a child. They intuitively feel their job is to be cheerful and upbeat.

But I don’t do that. Who am I kidding? I have enormous respect for the dying, they have a lifetime of wisdom and feeling, they don’t need cheerleading from me.

I take Zinnia down the hall to visit other patients or cheer up the nurses. I come back, sit down, open the blinds, ask Susan how she is doing, I touch her arm, take her hand, almost like a handshake.

Donna kisses Susan goodbye, I’ve never been comfortable doing that, it seems false for me to do it.

But there is love. Susan always smiles when she sees me and tries to talk to me. I see the twinkle in her eye, even when she can’t speak.  I am glad to be there; I think she is pleased that I am there. If she did move up here because of me and Maria and our farm, then so what?

As usual, I am in the minority about some things relating to the dying process. I am sure Susan hears sounds and absorbs feelings, but I don’t believe she can grasp in any literal way what is being said to her, or sung to her, at least right now.

My intention these the last] few days is to be a presence in the room. I don’t need to re-organize or move things or try to cheer her up. It’s not going to get better, only more peaceful.

Susan has often told me of her loneliness; I don’t want her to be lonely now. I can show love by being present.

Free at last, I tell her, free at last. You don’t need to worry about what people think of you any longer; you don’t need to please anyone but yourself now.

Elegance is a glowing inner peace; grace is the ability to give as well as receive, to understand as well as judge, to listen as well as talk, to love rather than hate or judge.

I’m not sure how it works, but Susan seems to have found grace at long last, I think she got what she wanted when she first saw the farm.

I think it was grace. Cancer has given her the freedom to let all that go.

I show my feelings for Susan by writing about her life honestly and authentically, as she wished.

That is one of the few ways in which I know to show love.

But grace comes in, seeing that there are so many different ways to love. I need to understand that and learn it, whatever people say to me.

I feel Susan has found grace in illness and death. Last week, I read her this passage from Herman Hesse in Siddhartha:

“I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment, and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair; I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.”

Susan loved that passage; she asked me to read it again and again. I didn’t ask her why she loved it so much.

But I know. Is there any better teacher of grace or empathy than so much hardship?