The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After

by Julie Yip-Williams

I tried to live always with good intentions and a good heart, although I am sure I have hurt people along the way. I tried my best to live a full, rewarding life, to deal with the inevitable trials with grace, and to emerge with my sense of humor and love for life intact. That’s all.

Dying has taught me a great deal about living—about facing hard truths consciously, about embracing the suffering as well as the joy. Wrapping my arms around the hard parts was perhaps the great liberating experience of my life.

Live while you’re living, friends. From the beginning of the miracle, to the unwinding of the miracle.

But I do know that there is incredible value in pain and suffering, if you allow yourself to experience it, to cry, to feel sorrow and grief, to hurt. Walk through the fire and you will emerge on the other end, whole and stronger. I promise. You will ultimately find truth and beauty and wisdom and peace. You will understand that nothing lasts forever, not pain, or joy. You will understand that joy cannot exist without sadness. Relief cannot exist without pain. Compassion

cannot exist without cruelty. Courage cannot exist without fear. Hope cannot exist without despair. Wisdom cannot exist without suffering. Gratitude cannot exist without deprivation. Paradoxes abound in this life. Living is an exercise in navigating within them.

want you to feel the pain, to live it, embrace it, and then learn from it. Be stronger people because of it, for you will know that you carry my strength within you. Be more compassionate people because of it; empathize with those who suffer in their own ways. Rejoice in life and all its beauty because of it; live with special zest and zeal for me.

our purpose in this life is to experience everything we possibly can, to understand as much of the human condition as we can squeeze into one lifetime, however long or short that may be. We are here to feel the complex range of emotions that come with being human. And from those experiences, our souls expand and grow and learn and change, and we understand a little more about what it really means to be human. I call it the evolution of the soul.

it is possible to be changed in a positive way by tragedy and you will learn the true value of suffering. The worth of a person’s life lies not in the number of years lived; rather it rests on how well that person has absorbed the lessons of that life, how well that person has come to understand and distill the multiple, messy aspects of the human experience.

Indeed, we will grieve not for what is lost but find strength in what remains behind, through the bonds of human sympathy born of common suffering, and in our faith in something greater than we can conceive of. And no doubt, finding strength in what remains behind includes rediscovering the magic and wonder of our powerful children and letting them help us walk through our darkest hours.

There are lessons to be learned, resourcefulness and discipline to be cultivated, good to be done, and courage, strength, grace, resolve, and pride to be gained. I know this to be true.

when one should begin the process of saying goodbye and understand that death is not the enemy, but merely the next part of life.

we all have a constant need to be accepted and loved in this world, to feel connected to the communities represented by networks of family, friends, colleagues, church, and the other groups that surround us. To belong, to matter to someone, to feel comfort.

hope; it is like a fire in our souls, sometimes flickering weakly, like the flame of a single candle in the night, and sometimes raging mightily, casting a warm and brilliant light of limitless possibilities.

Hope is a funny thing, though. It seems to have a life and will of its own; it is irrepressible, its very existence inextricably tied to our spirit, its flame, no matter how weak, not extinguishable.

Time and experience taught me new strength and courage,

I think I will always oscillate between embracing and rejecting hope.

I do know about hope is that it is an everlasting and indelible part of my spirit; it is there even when I feel hopeless, a perpetual flame. I have felt its faint warmth even in my darkest moments, even as I’ve sought to squash it. I know the flame, however weak or strong, will burn so long as I live. And near the end of my days, when it is clear that more life is not possible, my hope will evolve into something else, into hope for my children, hope for the human race, hope for my soul.

it’s the type of love that is shown only when life is threatened, when for a few minutes, hours, days, or weeks, everyone agrees on and understands what really matters. And yet, as transient as that love can be, its magic, intensity, and power can sustain the most cynical among us, as long as we allow ourselves to linger in the glow of its memory. This disease may bring me to the final days of my life on this earth, but the story of how cancer came into my life reminds me every day that while it has taken from me the innocence and happiness of my old life, it has also given me the gift of human love, which has

now become part of my soul and which I will take with me forever. 19

The sense that we ever had control over any of this seems nothing but a mockery now, a cruel illusion. And also, a lesson: we control nothing. Well, that’s not exactly true. We control how good we are to people. We control how honest we are with ourselves and others. We control the effort we have put into living. We control how we respond to impossible news. And when the time comes, we control the terms of our surrender.

don’t have such a powerful fear of what awaits in the undiscovered country, perhaps because I do believe there is another country and not just nothingness. I can’t explain to you why I believe; it is simply a matter of intuition and faith. For me, death waits like a doorway beckoning me to a new adventure, yet another on my long list of adventures, a new territory to explore and understand and from which my everlasting soul will learn and evolve.

no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger—something better, pushing right back.

true inner strength lies in facing death with serenity, in recognizing that death is not the enemy but simply an inevitable part of life.

with acceptance and peace, I have learned to live more fully and completely in the here and now, that I now live with a fierceness, passion, and love that I’ve never known. In what is the greatest irony of all, I have come to realize that in accepting death, I am embracing life in all of its splendor, for the first time.

Believe what you need to believe in order to find comfort and peace with the inevitable fate that is common to every living thing on this planet. Death awaits us all; one can choose to run in fear from it or one can face it head-on with thoughtfulness, and from that thoughtfulness peace and serenity.

find fascinating how some unique, charismatic figures, like Jesus Christ

altered the course of human history. The rest of us are merely swept along by the tide of events set in motion by others, past and present, and by events that are brought about by forces that are entirely beyond our control (i.e., God, Mother Nature, or the randomness of the universe, which brings about things like natural disasters and illness, depending on one’s religious and philosophical views). It is the stories of the rest of us that I find most intriguing and valuable—the

there is value in our individual memories, our own past, our own history;

what are we but the products of all our experiences? Rather than looking without to find inspiration, strength, and hope, sometimes we must look within ourselves to discover and discern our own stories. There are, after all, miracles in there. Of course, looking within is much more difficult, for we must confront our painful mistakes, our fears, our weaknesses, our insecurities, our ugliness.

Each of us has a story. Each of us has experiences from which we can draw strength and that can serve as the basis of our faith. It is just a matter of whether we are willing to dwell in often unpleasant memories, to extract the lessons of our history, to find the secrets of the journeys of our souls.

At some point, the reality and inevitability of death must be acknowledged and accepted.

Sometimes, I wish I could relive those moments, just push a button and for a few glorious minutes travel back in time and be that young, ecstatic woman falling in love with the man of her dreams all over again.

Time cares not that you are the man of my dreams, nor does it care about the most egregious wrongs we have committed against one another; it cares not whether the experiences and emotions were wanted or unwanted, loved or hated; it does not discriminate. Eventually, time dulls everything. It removes the intensity of the purest of joys and the hottest of rages and, yes, even the most heartbreaking of sorrows.

Time’s amnesiac power is necessary and healthy, for it encourages life and living, allowing room for new experiences and new emotions, which come with engaging in the present and being vested in the future, and places our memories where they should be—in the past, to be accessed when we need and want them. And perhaps most important and relevant to you, time allows for the gaping wounds of the past to close so that we can move forward, so that even the most painful experiences can be remembered with some objectivity, from which we can learn and grow.

It is in the acceptance of truth that real wisdom and peace come. It is in the acceptance of truth that real living begins. Conversely, avoidance of truth is the denial of life.