Giving Up and Letting Go

There’s a difference between giving up and letting go. This week I had perhaps my last face to face encounter with a colleague named Angela, whom I greatly respect. She really sees me. She sees beneath my superficial polish to the interesting person that’s underneath it. Practically no one else ever does that.

She’s also dying. But the way Angela puts it, she’s not giving up, she’s letting go. She seems tired but serene, refusing any more treatments for her cancer. Planning to live as long as she can. Believing that she has accomplished everything she set out to do. Write and publish her novel. Raise two sons. I don’t know what else. But she voices no regrets for any important tasks left undone.

She seems ready to let death take her, as far as I (who don’t know her very well) can discern. Maybe she has doubts. But she seems ready to let go. She makes it look easy, though I’m sure it’s not. I should know. I constantly ask myself: Can I let go of my own dreams for fame as a writer without feeling like I’m giving up? Without feeling like I should have done more? Without feeling that I’ve failed?

It might seem callous and self-absorbed to compare my writing dreams to Angela’s nearness to death. But she’s dying so gracefully, or so it seems. With physical pain but also in peace. Not with resignation or bitterness, it seems, but with serenity.

I hope we have not had our final conversation, Angela and I. But if we have, I’ll remember it and I will be, at the same time, inspired by it and troubled as well. Can someone like me learn to let go of something he’s held so close for so long, without feeling like he’s just given up and allowed himself to fail? We’ll see.