Barbara Brenner

I’m writing this in between chugging 8 oz doses of thick lemony saltwater, also known as Colyte, which is what they give you to clear out your insides before a colonoscopy.

I get a colonoscopy every year because, thanks to a genetic mutation I inherited from my Dad, I have an 80% chance of getting colon cancer in my lifetime (as well as high perentages for endometrial, kidney, ovarian, and other cancers). The point of getting a colonoscopy every year is to try to catch colon cancer at an early stage, which, unlike breast cancer, as Barbara would tell you, matters a great deal. Getting a camera inserted into my butt and wiggled around my intestines always causes me some anxiety because it’s always a possibility that they’ll find cancer there, and it reminds me that the chance of getting SOME kind of cancer in my lifetime is very high.

I’ve been thinking about Barbara Brenner all day. Barbara was the former Executive Director of Breast Cancer Action, where I work. Her memorial service was this morning and I feel so incredibly sad that her physical life has ended. In grieving her, I also feel a strong sense of “now THAT is how to live.”

One of the common threads from all of the wonderful, funny, heartfelt, loving tributes at her memorial service today was that Barbara lived with intention and purpose, throughout her life and to the very end. You could write a book about Barbara’s lifetime of activism (and I hope someone will) but what I’m struck by most today is how she lived the end of her life.

Barbara was diagnosed with ALS around the time of her retirement from Breast Cancer Action, which changed her retirement plans and felt, to me and many others, like a tragic diagnosis for someone who had lived through two breast cancer diagnoses, spent her life advocating for social change, and had a happy retirement ahead of her. But she didn’t sit back and wait to die, nor did she get any quieter in the world. She started a blog, took the FDA to task about ALS, continued to teach us about health advocacy, reported closely on the SF Giants games, provided her characteristically honest, sharp political commentary via her blog, Facebook, and Twitter.

I remember very vividly the last time I saw Barbara. I went with my coworkers to visit her and we all used text to speech software to converse so that everyone could participate using the same method. She asked me how I was faring at work, how my partner was doing, and listened intently to my answers. She laughed at my bad jokes.

Her rabbi said at the memorial that in one of their last conversations, when she mentioned something about the soul, Barbara asked her, “What do you mean by “soul”?

As Barbara taught us so much about activism and seeking justice in this world, she also showed us how to live with intention and purpose until the very end.

I think about Barbara as I think about the unknown outcomes of my colonoscopies, and all of the unknowns in life. My dad was coming inside from gardening one day, tripped on a stair, hit his head, and two days later he was dead. He, too, lived a life of purpose and intention to the end, planning an antiwar protest from his hospital bed before heart surgery. Some of us have a lot of advance warning and some of us have none at all. I’m reminded of how little control we have over our lives and that all we can do is lean into whatever happens and love each other hugely.

And while we are here on this Earth, leaning into life and loving each other? One of Barbara’s friends read this beautiful quote at her memorial:

“Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”