I have 106 e-mails in my inbox that I just cannot bring myself to erase. They are all from Nancy Duncan. Most of these missives urge me to learn about more ways I can change the world, Nancy nudging me into action… "now they are targeting Medicare--just as they have targeted overtime pay and good jobs"... "8 percent of the US population have unsafe levels of mercury in their blood and the hardest hit are new-born infants"… "buy breast cancer stamps and send out the word"… "there is a Constitutional Amendment being proposed that will ultimately ban homosexual marriages/civil unions and possibly domestic partner benefits in the future"… "the UN is gathering signatures in an effort to avoid a tragic world event"...

I have to admit that there were times that I felt too tired to read the latest news item Nancy sent. Some days I would think, "today I need a break from all this". Now I regret that I ever deleted any of these, because after just going through the ones I kept I find such gifts of hope and life. Most encourage working toward peace. Perhaps it is a story of why the Dalai Lama did not fight against the Chinese army - "Of course the mind can rationalize fighting back... but the heart, the heart would never understand. Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and the mind, and the war would be inside you.". Sometimes she sent questions - "Aren't Allah, God and Jehovah, after all, three names for the same divinity?" And she shared true stories, such as a friend's first flight after 911 and how the pilot and stewardess invited them all to protect and care for each other during their flight - "It was a day that everyone leaned on each other and together everyone was stronger than any one person alone. It was quite an experience."

And there are broadcast letters that Nancy sent out to so many who loved her and wanted to know how she was coping and wishing that we could be there to see her, rub her feet and tell her jokes back for every silly one she sent us. In these, Nancy was utterly honest about her struggle, her hopes, her race against time and her love of being alive. Here is a nugget of a story from a friend that Nancy sent out that tells a lot about how she faced life:

Milarepa, a Buddhist mediator and poet, had been meditating in his cave for many years. He was hungry so he decided to go out and pick up a few sticks so he could build a simple fire and cook a bit of soup for himself. When he came back, he found that a bunch of demons had moved into his cave. He started cursing and throwing sticks at them, but they just laughed at him and made fun of him. Realizing he wasn't getting anywhere with his angry approach, he decided to try another method. He went in his cave, started to build a fire, welcomed the demons as guests, and asked them to sit down and stick around for a bit of hot soup. All the demons immediately left. So it is with our fears. When fears come up in our minds, welcome them. Let them know they must be tired from their long journey to find us. Ask them to get comfortable and offer them a bit of soup. We are not going to get rid of our fears. We can't drive them out with sticks and stones. So we are encouraged to make friends with them. Nancy adds a note at the end: "one way to make friends is to tell stories but those fears. Get them to laugh at themselves."

While I never got to see Nancy's chicken stories in person or watch her tell her coyote tales, I am forever grateful that I was treated to a brief rendition of the Pocket People. While sitting in her car one day, she told it to me with her hands dancing across her face as the main characters, mooshing her nose and ears impossibly about and telling the whole tale with sounds but no words at all. If the car door hadn't been closed, I would have fallen out from hysterical laughter. She was that good.

But perhaps my favorite story of Nancy's was told to me in little pieces here and there, as she showed around me the Nebraska that she loved. One windy afternoon we stood out on a bridge over the river, watching migrating birds circle overhead as Nancy told me of her husband Harry, her children and grandchildren...

I still see her there as I write this, the wind blowing her brown hair in all directions. Perhaps this is why this poem, among so many others that she sent, is my favorite. Nancy wrote: "A poem of motherhood from THE UNSWEPT ROOM by Sharon Olds."

Sleep Suite

To end up in an old hotel suite
with one's nearly-grown children, who are sleeping, is a kind
of Eden. The one in the second bed
rests her head on two pillows - I did not know that -
as she sleeps. The one on the couch, under candlewick
chenille, has here and there as he turns
the stuffed animal his sister just gave him
for his twentieth birthday. I roam in the half-
dark, getting ready for bed, I stalk
my happiness. I'm like someone from the past
allowed to come back, I am with our darlings,
they are dreaming, safe. Perhaps it's especially like
Eden since this is my native coast,
it smells something like my earliest life,
fog, plumeria, eucalyptus, it is
broken, the killership of my family-
it is stopped within me, the complex gear
that translated its motion. When I turn out the light and lie
down, I feel as if I'm at the apex
of a triangle, and then, with a Copernican
swerve, I feel that the apex is my daughter,
and then my son, I am that background figure, that
source figure, the mother. We are not,
strictly speaking, mortal. We cast
beloveds into the future. I fall
asleep, gently living forever
in the room with our son and daughter.

Nancy once sent me this quote from Barbara Kingsolver, "…every life that ends is utterly its own event--and also in some way it's the same as all others, a light going out that ached to burn longer. Even if you never had the chance to love the light that's gone, you miss it. You should. You bear this world and everything that's wrong with it by holding life still precious, each time, and starting over." This quote could hold such unutterable sadness in it for me if it weren't for another story Nancy also sent me. An elder was going to a nursing home after her husband died and as she was being taken to see her new room for the first time, the old woman said, "I already know that I will love it. Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is arranged ... it's how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it."

It is exactly this spirit that lives and breathes throughout these e-mails that keeps me from deleting them. And so I have them here to revisit again and again, to cherish her words that inspire me to try to help out somehow, somewhere, again and again and again. And to remember our dear friend.

Seems only right that Nancy should have the last word here...

"Keep me in your prayers and meditations. Hold me in the light. And I'll continue dreaming of our dance together. May Peace Prevail on Earth. Nancy K. Duncan.

Allison Cox combines her love of story with her training as a therapist, social worker, health educator and prevention specialist. She is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Healing Story Alliance and the editor of The Healing Heart books.