Prompt 284. An Ode to Oscar

& Susan Cain on love transformed

Suleika Jaouad, Sleep, Little Lord (2022)

Hi friend, 

Lately I’ve been thinking of February as “the month of bittersweetness.” It contains so many important milestones for me—some joyful, like my wedding anniversary; some sorrowful, like the death of my friend Anjali; some that contain a bit of both, like my second bone marrow transplant, which was harrowing but afforded me a chance at living.

And then there was the death of my beloved scruffy road dog, Oscar, which happened exactly two years ago this week. It was a bizarre twinning of timelines. Just before I learned of my leukemia relapse, Oscar was diagnosed with an incurable, fast-moving cancer. The vet said he would seem healthy and happy for a time, but that the end would come suddenly—and it did. I was in the hospital when it happened, ten days into my second bone marrow transplant. I was very sick with three simultaneous infections, two in my bloodstream, and in excruciating pain. As close to the veil as I’d ever been, I was wild-eyed with fear.

Yet Oscar was regarding his mortality much differently: he was completely calm. He had been in the care of my friend Elizabeth Gilbert since I reentered treatment, and the day he died, he allowed himself to be wrapped in his favorite blanket, and he let Liz and our friend Cat stroke and cuddle him. He surrendered as he’d never done before.

That was the last view I had of him, over Zoom. I was devastated, of course, but I also had some magical thinking around it. I had this sense that he had sacrificed himself in my hour of need—that he had offered himself in my stead. Incredibly, a few days later I got a note from a community member named Kandace that said something similar. She wrote, “In my culture, we believe that when the armas (protection items) we wear or our ceremonial tools break, that they are protecting us from a harm that was coming our way.” She said that she lost her beloved pup in the summer of 2020, and she endured that loss by thinking of it as an offering—that it was her dog’s way of protecting her human family from sickness, harm, and human loss. “As I read about the timing of Oscar’s departure, and the conditions under which it came to pass, I cannot help but think that little Oscar was perhaps doing the same for his beloved Susu, to aid in her healing.”

That next Sunday, I was too sick and sad to write, so I asked Liz to share the news of Oscar’s death with all of you. In her gorgeous missive, she wrote about how a teacher of hers once said that dogs are here to teach us how to die—because they don’t have scary stories about it, no fear and anxiety, they show us it’s not hard. All we have to do is let go.

This is a forever lesson, of course—one we have our whole lives to learn, one I am definitely still learning myself. But I think there’s another lesson that I’m learning from my dogs—and that’s about healing and transformation. Yesterday I was cleaning out a closet, and I found Oscar’s little winter coat, one he wore for years. I put it on Sunshine, my new rescue pup, and it fit her perfectly. I felt astonished by how far I’d come—by how much stronger I am, both physically and emotionally. At my lowest, sickest, most broken point, I never imagined I would feel whole again. But I do feel whole. I feel like I’m healing, in the sense that I’m learning to live with the pain that will always be there, to carry the things that linger, and to open myself to the new forms love can take.

And now on to today’s essay and prompt—about love transformed. It’s an excerpt from the bestselling book Bittersweet by the brilliant author and thought leader Susan Cain. Anytime I ask this community who they’d like to hear from, Susan is always at the top of your list, and there’s no mystery why. Among other things, Susan writes so powerfully about how we can respond to pain, how to transform it and to allow it to bring us together.

I’m so thrilled to share this excerpt and journaling prompt with you, and I’m even more thrilled to be leading a workshop for paid subscribers on joy, sorrow, and creative alchemy with Susan this afternoon. Below you’ll find everything you need to join us, along with Susan’s gorgeous words. Please read on—

Sending love, 

Suleika

On Joy, Sorrow & Creative Alchemy—

Today from 1-2pm ET, I’m hosting a very special workshop for paid subscribers in collaboration with the wise and wonderful Susan Cain. We’ll be talking about learning to hold the beautiful and the brutal in the same palm (see photo above!) and using creativity to marry our joy and sorrow. Susan is so brilliant, and it’s not too late to join us! Find everything you need here.

August Macke, Blond Girl with Doll (1910)

Prompt 284. Franz Kafka and the Doll by Susan Cain

Franz Kafka was one of the great European novelists of the twentieth century. But there's another story, this one written not by Kafka but about him, by the Spanish writer Jordi Sierra i Fabra. This story is based on the memoirs of a woman named Dora Diamant, who lived with Kafka in Berlin, just before his death.

In this story, Kafka takes a walk in the park, where he meets a tearful little girl who just lost her favorite doll. He tries and fails to help find the doll, then tells the girl that the doll must have taken a trip, and he, a doll postman, would send word from her. The next day, he brings the girl a letter, which he'd composed the night before. Don't be sad, says the doll in the letter. "I have gone on a trip to see the world. I will write you of my adventures." After that, Kafka gives the girl many such letters. The doll is going to school, meeting exciting new people. Her new life prevents her from returning, but she loves the girl, and always will.

At their final meeting, Kafka gives the girl a doll, with an attached letter. He knows that this doll looks different from the lost one, so the letter says: "My travels have changed me."

The girl cherishes the gift for the rest of her life. And many decades later, she finds another letter stuffed into an overlooked cranny in the substitute doll. This one says: "Everything that you love, you will eventually lose. But in the end, love will return in a different form."

This fictional Kafka, in the voice of the doll, was teaching the girl how to draw strength from her own imagination.But he was also showing her how to perceive love in its many forms—including the form that he brought into being—by inventing the role of doll postman.

Maybe this story is apocryphal, maybe it's factual. The record's not quite clear. Either way, it's deeply true. The fact that love sometimes returns in a different form doesn't mean that you won't feel seared and scalded when it goes away, or fails to appear in the first place, that its absence won't rip your life apart. It can also feel impossible to accept that the love you long for will not return in the form you first longed for it. Your parents who divorced when you were seven will not get back together, and even if they did, you're no longer the child you were when they split. If you do return to your birth country, it will be as a stranger, and you may find that the lemon groves whose scent is still so fragrant in your memory have been paved into parking lots. You will never find again the specific places or people or dreams that you've lost.

But you can find something else. You can have momentary glimpses—which may only be glimpses but still they're momentous—of your own perfect and beautiful vision of the perfect and beautiful world.

Your prompt for the week: 

Write about a time when something you loved and lost returned in a different form.

If you’d like, you can post your response to today’s prompt in the comments section, in our Facebook group, or on Instagram by tagging @theisolationjournals. As a reminder, we love seeing your work inspired by the Isolation Journals, but to preserve this as a community space, we request no promotion of outside projects.

Today’s Contributor—

Susan Cain is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking and Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. Susan’s books have been translated into more than 40 languages, and her TED talks have been viewed over 50 million times. She is the host of the bestselling Audible series, A Quiet Life in Seven Steps, and the Quiet Life online community. Sign up for her newsletter at TheQuietLife.net. Photo by Aaron Fedor.

For more paid subscriber benefits, see—

• A Creative Heart to Heart, a raw, unfiltered conversation with my beloved Jon Batiste, where we talk about how we use creativity to marry our joy and sorrow

• Carrying Complicated Grief, an installment of my advice column, Dear Susu, where I answer a question from a conflicted but loving mother: “Can I destroy my late daughter’s journals?”

• The Work of Happiness, a recap of our last meeting of the Hatch, where we read May Sarton’s poem “The Work of Happiness” and meditated on inwardness and inner strength