Radical hospitality
This post originally appeared on the Caring Bridge site for Barbara Settel,
who died on April 5, 2021. Drew and Lauren are her adult children.
I’ve just spent a week with Drew and Lauren at Camp Caz, an idyllic lakefront spot where, quite frankly, I wouldn’t mind going to die. The grass is green today and Barb’s daffodils are in bloom. Everywhere I look, I see bits of her energy and creativity. Things aren’t perfect here, but they function well enough that she could disappear for hours or days or weeks at a time—to live that full life we all admired.
From my Adirondack chair on the lawn, I see a makeshift fence whose posts are made of beat-up ski poles. Cloudy bird feeders are spinning in the breeze. The shellacked jigsaw puzzles tacked to the shed are a wee bit faded. Four crooked bamboo posts are just sturdy enough to support the string of Edison bulbs that light the deck at night. And the grill cover has a big jaggy hole in it—no doubt it burned on one of the many nights Barb cooked for a house full of people. I imagine she was impatient that evening; eager to close things down so she could get her sleep and rise early. The next morning, she’d get out on her bike, or paddle a kayak, or paint a table in the style of MacKenzie-Childs. Or maybe it was a winter night, and she was eager to wax her skis in the basement in preparation for her next race. Barb got a lot done in a day, didn’t she?
Are you still reading? I hope so. Drew and Lauren asked me to write this final post here on Caring Bridge, and that’s a daunting task. Especially having read Lauren’s beautiful obit. I won’t repeat the facts of Barbara’s life, or relay what they told me about the last days they spent as a family, appreciating their many blessings and receiving loving messages from friends. But maybe I can round out, wrap up, and say a few things that haven’t yet been said. Things we may all be thinking.
Like many of you, I missed the goodbye moment I hoped for. As Barb’s cancer advanced and she spent more time on the couch, I prepared to drive the 24 hours from Denver to Cazenovia as I had in September, when I volunteered for a 10-day shift on her care team. Back then, she had started chemo; but was still very much in charge. She cooked for me and drove the boat. We took long walks with Juno, and she left to play tennis while I stayed home and worked. She zip-zip planned all the logistics for our trip to the beach in Rhode Island before either of us could change our mind. I wondered if her frenetic pace was because she knew her time was limited. But no. Perpetual motion was her natural state.
Now, it’s six months later—nine months since her diagnosis of an inoperable, incurable, rare urothelial cancer that had sneakily advanced to stage IV. I’d been stuck at home, waiting for my second Covid vaccine appointment, so I couldn’t afford to spend two or three days on the road. I bought a one-way ticket to Syracuse, and as Barb got weaker, I moved up my departure date twice. On Monday morning, six hours before my flight, Lauren texted that her mother had died. I wouldn’t get to see her, but what mattered was that Lauren and Drew were there. There was no chaos. Just a quiet goodbye. It was time for her to go.
Covid was especially hard on Barb. It kept her home, as it did the rest of us. But cancer treatments also tied her to Syracuse. She traveled a bit and skied until the very end, but she missed her chance to spend a few months in Utah, which was a pre-Covid, pre-cancer dream. Almost every Friday night for a year, Barb joined a Shabbat She-Zoom call that I convened so my besties could bitch and share and not feel so alone. And on Wednesdays and Sundays she snuck around the lake to have dinner at home with friends, though Lauren and Drew worried she might get sick. But she already was sick. And she needed people.
The first morning I was here, I found a book on Barb’s coffee table: Wake Up Grateful by Kristi Nelson. On cool mornings, wrapped in a sweater I found in her closet, I’ve taken it down to the gazebo to hold it in my lap. A neat corner of page 31 was turned down, so I know she had read at least that far. I wish she’d made it a few pages further, to find the phrase “radical hospitality.” As my first friend in Cazenovia, Barb introduced me to her friends, showed me the slopes at Labrador, and invited me on bike rides and boat rides and to holiday dinners. When I lost my job and took a flyer as a writer and communications consultant, she got me my first assignment. She treated everyone this way.
As the books says, “Radical hospitality means honoring the truth of all that we cannot anticipate and control, and all that arrives unexpected or uninvited…Greeted with open arms and an open heart, every part of life can find its place at the table. Hello heartbreak. Welcome, joy. Come on in tenderness, doubt, vulnerability.”
Barb’s illness arrived unexpected and uninvited. Her death brought heartbreak. Her life brought joy. Even Barb was vulnerable, and occasionally expressed doubt. To the very end, we held her with compassionate love. We had a place at her table.
It’s impossible to say the right-perfect thing now. So, I’ll end on an up note as Barb would want. I’ll bid adieu to my badass friend and trusty lake companion. Lover of labs, doer of puzzles and player of word games. Two-wheel pedaler and rainy-day paddler. Pointer of skinny sticks downhill and over water.
You, my friend, were a force majeure! An extraordinary influence. An irresistible power. An episode of incalculable scale.
We will never forget you.
