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Crap, I’ve got cancer This edition published to mark the first anniversary of Suvanna’s death, October 2014. First published 18 December 2013 © the estate of Suvanna Lisa Cullen Cover and layout, Dhammarati Editing and typesetting, Vidyadevi Incredulous Otters Press We still can’t believe it iii Crap, I’ve Got Cancer iv Crap, I’ve Got Cancer Crap, I’ve got cancer The sad, somewhat funny, definitely not depressing cancer memoir Suvanna Lisa Cullen v Crap, I’ve Got Cancer vi Crap, I’ve Got Cancer Funny how in the light of death everything shines! from Petals by Rick Fields vii Crap, I’ve Got Cancer Contents viii Thanks x Crap, I’ve Got Cancer Editorial note xi Foreword, by John Wilson (Paramananda) xiii Strapping into the roller coaster 1 Timeline of trouble 3 2012 January The albino tiger of the oncology department 7 Bodies really hurt! 22 February What can I tell my bones? 23 Opening the door 38 March The human body at peace with itself 39 The creative mind 48 April The power of ideas 49 Buddhism vs. the visceral responses 57 Song 58 May A kind of trust 59 Song 2 (my animals) 67 Expectations 68 June An adventure in how things are 69 Memoirs of observer and observed 81 July The emotions of statistics 83 The preciousness of life 93 2012 August ix These are not obstructions to enlightenment 95 Crap, I’ve Got Cancer Me and other people: Love 107 September The reason you have to face death 109 Embracing suffering 123 October What can we ever really know? 125 Ode to Jacques Cousteau 138 ix Crap, I’ve got cancer November Heal thyself 139 If you love animals 146 December Die while you are alive 147 Tolerance 162 2013 January Everything looks beautiful 163 Cultivating the inner retreat 173 February Hope and fear 175 Separated 184 x Crap, I’ve Got Cancer 2013 March House on fire 185 Constellations of kindness 198 April Officially dying 199 Hibernation 218 May On being seen as “dead soon” 219 Freedom on the inside 231 x Contents June What is being me? 233 Things as they are: fluidity and awareness 239 July Ghosts in my throat 241 The Matrix 246 August The view from inside 247 On conflict with friends 257 September How much life? 259 The Bodhisattva’s New Shoes 264 Thanks Many thanks to Suvanna’s sisters, Laura, Kathy and Paulette, for their xi Crap, I’ve Got Cancer generous help with getting this book printed, to Dhammarati for giving so much time and care to designing this book, to Hridayashri for her help with finding and preparing the photographs, and to Padmatara and Candradasa for all their support. Suvanna loved poetry and often quoted on her blog the poems that spoke to her on that day, so it seemed very important to include those poems in this book. I’ve written to all the copyright holders, as far as I’ve been able to find out who they are, explaining the nature of this book and asking their permission to quote the poems. I haven’t heard back from all of them yet, but want to express my thanks and appreciation in xi Crap, I’ve got cancer advance of this private publication. Editorial note xii In December 2012, Suvarnaprabha sent me an email: “I don’t know if Crap, I’ve Got Cancer you have heard but I am in fact dying of cancer. I have been writing updates on a blog for the last year, and would very much like the blog to be edited into a book. Many people told me they thought it would be relevant to people who don’t know me, as their sisters or moms or whatever are reading it. (Or maybe they were just humoring me!)” And that’s how this book began. Suvarnaprabha was the one who found herself strapped into the roller-coaster, as she put it, from the moment she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer (“I like to think of myself as the albino tiger of the oncology department”) but with typical generosity she took all of us with her for the ride, finding so many ways of saying the (horribly) unspeakable and expressing the (deeply) inexpressible. She wanted to finish this book herself, and had very specific ideas about how she wanted it to be, but in the end she had to leave it to her friends to finish it for her. The book in your hands is her gift to you today. An idea we had quite early on was to include some of her earlier writings, both prose and poetry, interspersed between the months of her cancer blog entries. She had a gift for saying things, and a gift for meaning them, and feeling them; she clearly had a lot more in her to write, and we wanted this book to include as many as possible of her words. The blog entries are presented here pretty much as they were written. Some of the medical details have been cropped a bit, and a few of the wilder digressions seemed not to want to stay, though many of the wildest kept sneaking back in. There’s a whole cast of characters – we get to know Suvanna’s friends and family through their frequent appearances, and many doctors and nurses, both real and fictional, also feature (here they’re given initials rather than names, according to a cunning coding system devised by their considerate patient ...) There’s a fair smattering of Buddhist names and Sanskrit terms to contend with – if you’re not familiar with them, just breeze past them as Suvarnaprabha herself would advise. When I asked her about her name in an email, she said, “I’m Suvarnaprabha to Buddhists and Suvanna when not in Buddhist company, though some Buddhists call me Suvanna, but they’re not supposed to!” By the way, Suvarnaprabha is a Sanskrit name (given to her when she was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order in 2001) meaning “golden radiance”. Suvarnaprabha never shied away from writing about her approaching encounter with the grim reaper, to use one of the politer and more conventional ways she referred to that mysterious process, but whatever was going on and however she felt about it, through all the medical appointments and appearances of Nurse Jackie, the journeys and movie recommendations, her delight in good friends, the moments of sadness, stoicism, drama and farce, the underlying theme of this story, as I’m sure you’ll agree, is not really ‘cancer’, or ‘death’ at all, but love. Vidyadevi, November 2013 xiii Crap, I’ve Got Cancer xiii Crap, I’ve got cancer Foreword by John Wilson (Paramananda) xiv Late Fragment Crap, I’ve Got Cancer by Raymond Carver And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth. A few days after learning about Suvarnaprabha’s terminal diagnosis with cancer, I was talking to a friend and found myself saying that it was such a shame as she had so much to offer as a teacher. My friend said that maybe her death would be her teaching. I don’t think I found those words particularly helpful at the time, but over the next two years they came back to mind often and were to prove prophetic. On reflection, how could it have been otherwise? Suvarnaprabha embodied her Dharma practice in an unusually deep way. I do not mean to imply that she was a ‘perfect’ Buddhist, but rather that she was more or less without any front. She was in equal measure vulnerable, honest, profound and neurotic. When she died I found a little refrain going through my mind which went ‘She was big boned, big mouthed and big hearted’. She was one of those rare people who made an impression that stayed with you and kept inspiring you. Oscar Wilde once said ‘Most people are other people’. She was one of the rare exceptions. A few months before she knew she was ill we were leading a month- long retreat together in a field in Devon in the west of England. It was two years later, at the time of the same retreat, which we had planned to do together again, that she died. About half of the people on that second retreat had also been on the earlier one I taught with Suvarnaprabha, and it was a comfort for me to be with some people who remembered her. People spoke of their memories, and what stuck in their minds was all the laughter between her and me. It was a delight to work with Suvarnaprabha, who had become a very dear friend over the eight years in the nineties when I lived in her home town of San Francisco. For most of that time we both lived above the Buddhist center, she on the top floor in a small women’s community, and I on the first floor in a small men’s community. We shared a deck and there was a great deal of contact between us all. We became close friends partly perhaps because we shared a love of poetry as well as Buddhism but more because we just naturally felt at ease with one another. Suvarnaprabha was a complex woman. She was tough and down to earth and on the other hand – there was always the other hand with us both – she was incredibly smart and sensitive, vulnerable and beautiful.

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