The Unmuted Path: Sibling Bonds to Published Memoir- A Conversation With Mick Cochrane
What if resilience and compassion were life tools forged in a violent childhood where poverty, alcohol and illness were constants? Could they pave the way for an unshakable sibling bond that becomes a journey of purpose and connection?
Listen as Mick Cochrane, acclaimed writer and professor answers this question in his captivating narrative of growing up alongside his remarkable, humorous, and creative sister, Sue. As a family court judge for 18 years, she found unconventional ways to put the heart back into the body of the law, while dealing with a life-threatening cancer diagnosis. It then returned as an inoperable brain tumor. Through multiple chemo rounds and brain surgeries,
Sue had a deep curiosity about life, science, spirituality, and death- and a radical openness that allowed others to feel at ease. She chose to live with compassion and joy- like a mirror reflecting the good in others.
Mick shares his journey to publish Sues’ extraordinary memoir: “The Crystal Gavel: How I put my heart into the body of the law.”
Reading this book is like talking to Sue, you can’t help but get pulled in! From her trauma born mutism to international speaker for collaborative law, she embodied Mary Oliver’s words:
“The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.”
Links
Mick Cochrane
The Crystal Gavel: How I Put My Heart into the Body of the Law by Sue Cochrane, Edited by Mick Cochrane, Wise Ink Publisher
Kintsugi: The Golden Joinery of Love by Sue Cochrane, Syndicated from themovementofhealing.org Oct.31, 2023
Judicial referee Susan Cochrane, who channeled her difficulties into life's work of compassion, dies at 65 by Rachelle Olson, Star Tribune February 27, 2021
Podcast Transcript
Pat
Fill To Capacity, where heart, grit and irreverent humor collide. A podcast for people too stubborn to quit and too creative not to make a difference. Hi, I'm Pat Benincasa and welcome to . Today's episode "The Unmuted Path Sibling Bonds to Published Memoir a conversation with Mick Cochran. This episode is a bit unusual. Think of it as nesting dolls you open one story to find another story, to find yet another story. My guest is Mick Cochran, a claimed writer and professor of English at Canisius College in upstate New York and, by the way, Mick was on FTC in 2021, and we had a terrific discussion about his published works and diving into the powerful intricacies of storytelling. Mick is the brother of Sue Cochrane, who passed away on February 13, 2021. This is a story about two remarkable people and about unconditional love between siblings who experienced trauma growing up. Open another nesting doll and you'll find a story about a brother in his tireless efforts to bring his sister's extraordinary life, as told in her memoir, to the world. Welcome, Mick, so nice to have you here!
Mick
Oh, such a joy we're talking to you, Pat.
Pat
Now it's not like we haven't been excited about this with all the emails back and forth. And also welcome and thank you, Pavi Mehta of Daily Good for suggesting and organizing the RSVPs and the idea to have this conversation. So thank you Pavi. The format for this podcast is with a circle of listeners, meaning Mick and I will be in conversation for about 30 minutes and then we open it up to our circle for comments. So, Mick, will you start by sharing your early life, the challenging circumstances you and Sue grew up in, with your parents, the divorce and how these experiences shaped the both of you.
Mick
Sure, Sue and I grew up in St Paul, Minnesota, and Sue liked to say that we literally had a white picket fence. So we lived in a middle class suburb. My father was an attorney, Mom was kind of a 60s housewife and there were three of us, 18 months apart, I am the youngest of three. Sue has their early stories, almost a kind of Edenic childhood of creativity and a room full of musical instruments and stories and toys. But early in our childhood there was a kind of a shattering, and our mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, an incurable neurological disease, and our father was a drinker and really descended into a kind of violent alcoholism and left our family and he'd come back from time to time and sort of terrify us and he chose not to support us. So we went from this nice middle class existence into a life of fear and confusion and poverty, and one of the things Sue writes about is nobody really talked about anything, that our mom was depressed, and our dad was suffering disease and so that was a central fact of Sue's life and it was formative in lots of ways and it one way was formative, it drew us together and in my last lecture I talk a lot about how, maybe in only ways when there's a need.
Sue, who was older, and I played together and supported each other and writes at some length about. You know, talk about world building, this imaginative world we created that involves Sue, ventriloquist style, talking for our stuffed animals and imbuing them with different personalities and, and I think now like oh, no wonder, I became a novelist. I mean, that's what novelists do, right, they make characters talk and, as I said, it was this whole fun world. There was a restaurant, there was a radio show, there was a hospital, there was a government, there was a presidential election in my favorite bear, won every election. So those two things I think we're forming in all kinds of ways.
So certainly there was creativity, which is a crucial theme in Sue's life.
Mick
I don't think escape is the right word for it. It was, I guess, like art. You kno it's a place that you go to and it provides safety and a chance to work things out and to return sustained and fortified in some ways. So s Sue was, like you, Pat, multi omni-creative, you know. She played musical instruments, she wrote poems. She was very proud that she published a poem and highlights magazine when she was eight years old. So that that's a big part of it. So then the other thread is the deep understanding and compassion that for the rest of her life she brought the kind of suffering that she knew firsthand, you know. And creative writing.
We talk a lot about authority. You know what you're talking about. Are you writing from something that's close to you? And for better or worse, you had authority about certain kinds of difficulties and certain kinds of suffering. And for the rest of her life we know that that made her more passionate family court judge, that made her a wonderful mother, that made her a good friend. So those two threads, I think, are woven together inextricably hardship and suffering and confusion, and yet resilience it's such a cliche now, but Sue was the most resilient, that she had inner resources and strength and courage that were seem to almost unimaginable, to me.
Pat
Yes, you set the stage for the next piece. I'd like to fast forward just a little bit to give a brief bio of Sue's legal career, and this was from the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper. That said quote, "Susan Cochran channeled her own painful experiences as the child of a brutal divorce, violence and alcoholism into a career of uncommon compassion as a legal advocate for children and the family court judge, including an 18 year stretch as a family court judge in Hennepin County. When her cancer returned, she had to step down. Mick, would you mind? Would you read from the chapter elevation from Sue's book.
Mick
Yes, I'd love to, and so this is the moment when she is named a judge and elevation is the term and it's so galled her that is applied to judges assuming the position ascending to the bench. So this is the ceremony and her reflections. "Everyone surrounded me with their congratulations. The official court photographer appeared to shoot various staged photos, then continue taking casual photos which appeared later in the monthly court newsletter, full court press. I was overwhelmed by the attention and my face hurt from smiling. For years afterwards.
My friends refer to the ceremony as my coronation, which embarrassed me. If I had had my way, I would have slipped in quietly and just started working on a Monday as I did every other job. It always rankled me to read an announcement that Attorney Jane Doe was recently elevated to the court. Having judges physically sit up higher than others at a massive marble and mahogany bench flanked by the American and state flags with ornate eagle finials on top seemed to say that they know more than you, are better than higher, than wiser than you. Looking down on people felt all wrong to me and it was my passion to change this model. I knew the setup well as a practicing attorney, but not until I personally set up there Did I know in my heart. It had to change. It was uncomfortable and often dehumanizing, Although it looked like I was the main character on stage. The judge is actually the audience. The people that appear before judges have the important speaking parts, and judges ought to listen to them.
Soon after I was sworn in, I saw more evidence of this false authority. Everywhere the law is filled with the noble principles of justice, fairness and equality that the rules and bureaucracy seemed detached from them. The principles I valued and practiced in my daily life, such as nurturing and compassion, kindness, creativity and peacemaking, were ridiculed as too nice. In AA, we are taught that the spiritual life is not a theory. We must live it. We believe that the people working in the court institutions should embody the principles that the legal system is built on. Instead, the people we were there to serve, many in crisis or with special needs, could be greeted by a crabby or strict bureaucrat, forced to wait for long lines, only to be told by a judge that they filled out the forms all wrong and had to start over. The filing fee was hundreds of dollars. Unless they were on federal poverty scale or had a legal aid, lawyer or other financial hardship. They had to fill out more forms than we'd even longer, to get a judge to approve a fee waiver. Also clearly missing was a plan for empowering people rather than overpowering them.
I wondered if I could be at ease in a system that treats people this way. I felt uncomfortable, personally, even to appear as if I had answers, because of where I sat and what I wore. The truth was, and still is, that everyone has the answers for their own lives within themselves. Changing the system into a kind, respectful and helpful environment is what I wanted to do, but it would take time. I slipped away by myself after the cake and photographs to take a break and also to visit my chambers. I sat in the leather desk chair for a long moment looking at the wall of law books and the lone vase of yellow tulips I'd brought and placed on the empty expanse of my new desk. In a few days, families would fill my daily docket and my courtroom expecting me to solve their conflicts and relieve their pain, Then write it all up neatly in a court order that they would live by and that we hoped everyone involved would obey.
No law book contained what I needed to do this job. I think I knew that already. Seeing the events from the perspective of those who suffered while being in a position of privilege and power was a gift. Many professionals or those with power over others or those with extra privileges, are unaware of what it is really like to be poor, abused, voiceless and lost in addiction. Many judges come from Ivy League colleges and law schools and large elite law firms. Some are still compassionate and do understand the problems, even though they did not have to live in these circumstances. For me being granted this unusual place in the world, I realized that what used to be a shameful and painful history could now be an asset. I already had what I needed to do the job." I like that so much because it's that moment when she realizes all the things that have been difficult to and she felt ashamed of and tried to conceal, Never talked about in her job interview or put on her CV, were actually her greatest strengths.
Pat
Yes, and this is Sue in the legal world. She is someone who battled two different cancer bouts, with 34 rounds of chemo and multiple brain surgeries. She lived, quote "fully and joyfully for 10 years with a terminal diagnosis and, as you said, Mick she was wife, mother of three boys, law reformer, lifelong seeker, writer, speaker, musician and member of a meditation center, member of the Friday Circle of wise women. She was a weaver and a dear friend to many. Mick, what would you add to this list?
Mick
She was a great sister and, you know, I think, a model of a way of being in the world.
Mick
I think. Well, how did she do it? How did she maintain she was such an optimist and really an idealist? I had vivid memories when she played the guitar. One of her favorite songs was, I think Pete Seager used to sing it. "Last night I had the strangest dream I never dreamed before. I dreamed that the world had all agreed to put an end to war.
And there's a scene that she describes when she's an undergraduate and this kind of crabby professor says in a public administration class, do you think that people can be bureaucrats, people who work for the government can really make a difference? And there was a kind of cynicism and Sue believed, yes, you could. And I think that those of us who knew that she had a kind of clear-eyed optimism is the way I described it. Right to the end, a kind of curiosity, and she was curious about science. She was curious about spiritual things and even if she approached death, she was curious about that. We read many books together about death and dying and she was interested. And it was another thing to be curious about.
And she had a great gift for friendship, and you've touched on that that to know Sue, especially in her later years, it took about 45 seconds to become her dear friend and there was a kind of radical openness. She was a great listener. Someone Thursday night here in Buffalo remembered that she'd met Sue maybe five years ago at a picnic when Sue had come to visit, and she said Sue was such a listener. She remembered vividly how Sue listened to hers if there were nobody else, and I think those are wonderful gifts. Just as a person, as a judge, as a friend, as a mother, she had a hard time speaking and the rest of her life, I think, was finding that voice and this book is the ultimate manifestation of that, but also finding a way to give voice to others. That was her life's mission.
Pat
You know, you bring up an interesting point. People that are going through long term or serious illness, there's a thing called "toxic positivity and that's when people overemphasize the need to stay positive or dismiss valid negative emotions. And for someone who's suffering from a long term, serious illness, they may sometimes feel pressure to hide their true feelings and struggles. How did Sue talk about her cancer and its return? What was the impact that it had on her life and outlook?
Mick
That's a wonderful phrase. I've never heard it, but I understand the phenomenon Well, one of the things I remember Sue would say she would permit herself to express a preference, and I remember her saying I would have preferred another diagnosis which is a wonderful exercise in understatement, isn't it? But she started by that. She didn't pretend that she was happy about that or that was good or that somehow it was in the you know better. And she would start there, but soon she would go on to what's next. And you know, there was maybe a little semicolon between those two things.
And the other thing about Sue is you know her from afar, how could you become Sue? Well, there was practice to it, and in the arts we talk about 10,000 hours to be good at writing or at anything else. Well, Sue spent years on the spiritual discipline of Alcoholics Anonymous, starting when the day she got sober she went to she went to more than 40 meetings in 40 days and for years. And she spent hours and hours and years and years on retreats and cultivating an acceptance of the world as it is and doing meditation, so that when this came, I think she was like an athlete who'd been training all her life and this was a kind of an event that she was up to and, to the extent that she can be, and she surrounded herself with people and she was open and when she was sad she said she was sad and when she needed help, she asked for help.
It was a great life lesson that Sue was willing to ask for help. She had a team, she had armies of helpers for all kinds of things, and we all need help and I think that people came to her aid when she needed it.
Pat
Yeah, well, that brings me to talking about Sue's personal values, Her Buddhist beliefs and how they influence really her approach to life. To meet Sue, you would have been struck by her ability to make you feel at ease with her quick humor and delight in life. And, as you said earlier, you meet Sue and all of a sudden there could be people in the room, but when Sue's talking to you, you are the only person on the planet at that moment that Sue is talking to. Mick, you had mentioned before that Sue left huge tips at restaurants and waiters would follow her out the door to hug her. Tell us more about her beliefs.
Mick
Well, she was a waitress, you know, and that was her first job at a lunch counter, and so once you're a waitress, you make her compassionate and she was also living in the moment. I remember one time she said to me I never thought I would live this long and she had burned through an insurance policy or something and she lived for the moment and she wasn't worrying about two years from now. But I think that she always said yes and she was open, and I think that was a part of it. I was thinking a lot about how what made her a good person made her a good writer, and I think that I want to emphasize that her book it's a good book and she's a skillful writer, and she became that way and I've devoted my life to writing and trying to help people become skillful writers, so it was astonishing to see how good she was spending her life in a legal career and then to be able to write a memoir of such grace and insight. You know, part of it is certainly compassion. If you write about your life, you're writing about an earlier version of yourself, so you have to start by being compassionate to yourself and when we look back sometimes we're embarrassed by ourselves. We're ashamed of ourselves. We don't want to. You know, and Sue drank alcoholically in her 20s.
She got sober at the age of 27, which is the age she used to point out that other people died Famous people like her Cobain and Amy Winehouse who got sober and she was able to look back on that in a clear-eyed way and write about it and became compassionate. She thought of herself as suffering what now is described as selective mutism, that she couldn't speak in public situations or in grade school, and so she was in order to write. She was compassionate about herself and she was compassionate about other people, and our parents were not good parents, and yet when she writes about them, she's true both to the experience, but also understanding that it's someone I know said to hurt people. Hurt people, and my mom and dad were hurt, and Sue writes about them in a compassionate way, and she was also, you know, patient. You have to kind of let things unfold, in the same way that to master any heart, you have to come back day after day and see what happens and some days, not much happens and just to revisit and she spent. I saw something that I came across and was dated like 2012. So she was.
She worked for at least 10 years on the stories that became this book and she lived with them and went deeper and explored and revised and looked again. So that's a big part of it too, and she just wanted to do it. That's another part of it. She wanted to tell first her sons and then the rest of us who she was and what mattered to her. In her own words. You know, an obituary is nice, it's beautiful. There's a beautiful obituary that appeared in the paper, but it's no substitute for Sue, in her own words, describing her own life. And you hear that. I'm glad you. I mean. You know how funny she was, she was a hoot, and that humor comes across in her book. Yeah, it was a situation when she didn't memorize jokes, but she could see the absurdities of life and it was a. It's a great equalizer and often it was self-effacing. It's a way to come down off the pedestal of the bench and just be human together.
Pat
You really bring up an interesting point, this notion of compassion. What strikes me about Sue's book is that at the heart of compassion is vulnerability. You can't be compassionate without being vulnerable, and with that, vulnerability almost means a tenderness towards oneself. There's something expansive in that. Her compassion comes across as hard won, like she really had to work for it. But in that book, her memoir, the vulnerability she allows herself to say this is who I am, and so I keep asking you are there levels of compassion? What makes this so powerful?
Mick
I love that idea, Pat, of tenderness towards yourself and how we learn to do that. Sue believed we could only be tender to ourselves if someone had been tender to us, and part of Sue's spiritual quest was to connect with that. There's a wonderful moment about halfway through the book. In some ways it's the centerpiece of the book, called "Why Did God Abandon Us? And Sue's on a spiritual retreat and she's sober and we're well past our childhood and yet she's still suffering and confused and disconnected from any sense of faith and she shows that kind of vulnerability that you talk about and over a series of sessions just pours out her life and sort of new layers. And her spiritual advisor says somebody loved you. I can just tell who was that. And she said, of course, mick, and also our maternal grandmother, who was a wonderful presence. And Sue revisits that and writes about her. She was wonderful, nurturing, loving presence.
And finally, the spiritual advisor said God didn't abandon you. Your father abandoned you. So I love that. You have hard earned self-tenderness and I think the last stage is writing. One of my beliefs. My former teacher gave a talk at the University of Iowa called how Writing revives us and I love that notion that if you write a book, it changes you, it just does, and it's hard to put into words. And writing this book, I think, changed Sue. I know it did, and one of the things that may have done was help to achieve that kind of self-tenderness. And then you know, but the vulnerability was in the writing of it.
Pat
To tell the truth, there's a particular chapter it's very brief called "Finding my Story. Will you share that with us?
Mick
I'd love to, and it comes near the end. And one of the things I like about it is Sue and I kind of both believe that life comes to us in stories and that if you choose the right stories and tell them properly, you can sort of tell your whole life. But you have to work at it and I think this is maybe an invitation or even a challenge to all of us to find our stories too. I think the best books. You put them down and then you want to go write and tell a story. Well, one story leads to another. So I said this is both Sue telling her about her determination to find her stories, but also an invitation for us to do likewise.
"One challenge I encountered while trying to figure out how to tell my life story started after I began studying Buddhism and attending silent meditation retreats. I learned, especially through the teaching of a popular Buddhist author, that when meditation students feel strong emotions triggered by a memory, event or thought, we are supposed to quote, drop the storyline and just be open to the underlying emotion. I disliked everything about dropping the storyline. This conflict me trying to understand the stories of my life. Their teaching to drop all the stories came to a head on a particular retreat. After four days of silent meditation, I was sitting outside the retreat center, meditating under a tree overlooking the calm lake, and started crying. After a time, these words came to me what happened to you as a child broke your heart. I saw how I'd spent most of my life either trying to pass as quote normal or striving to be exceptional. Too often I'd ignored my broken heart, covered it up, hid it from the outside world, designed my resume so no one could find it. I sometimes even tried to hide it from myself. But at that moment I was alone with my heartache. My pain made sense. I knew why I hurt so much and I felt it viscerally, to my core. It was as real as the broken arm I suffered when I was seven years old.
Later that day, in our single 15-minute private meeting with my beloved teacher, I was excited to tell her this discovery. After I did, she said Sue, you take everything so personally. Drop the storyline, you don't need it here. There it was. I was supposed to be mute again and I was not supposed to trust my own heart and emotions. I'd been dismissed once again for being me. I felt anger rising then. Shame for feeling upset with my beloved teacher. I'd spent years unearthing my feelings and I was supposed to forget all that. To her it was the storyline, but it was my life. How could I not take it personally? There was a pause in the room during which I debated a range of responses, from walking out of her small office forever and slamming the door to say nothing at all. With my heart beating fast and strong, I chose to speak up. How can I drop the stories when I am just learning what they are? I do not remember her response.
From then on, I chose to continue looking for my stories. I meditated, reflected and wrote. I went on the blind faith that it was important for me to find my stories and to share them, no matter what my teacher said. I sifted through the pieces of my past. As I wrote, it came alive. It wasn't just a storyline. It was the texture of my lived experience, the people, the things and the moments that not only broke my heart but made me who I am A skeletal father in a cashmere coat, a dying mother calling for me by banging a wooden spoon, an irrepressible talking red poodle.
A shiny blue Mustang. A sleek bass guitar. Blackout drunks in a church basement full of welcoming strangers. A photograph of two tiny, bundled baby boys. A kind police officer with his armor on the shoulders of a sobbing teenage boy. A black robe in a courtroom full of other families' confusion and heartache. A doctor's dread pronouncement in a seemingly endless series of scans, radiations and surgeries. The glittering shards of a broken gavel. I found out there were no stories until I began to tell them. But when I did, I made connections among the pieces, I made sense of things. I found my own part, the choices I made, and I came to believe that my stories may be useful to others. Hannah Arendt, the renowned political philosopher, once said the story reveals the meaning of what otherwise would remain an unbearable sequence of sheer happenings Instead of a litany of unbearable wrongs. I saw a life, and it was mine."
Pat
Thank you, Mick. You know, exploring your shared history, including childhood traumas, cancer battles, judicial work, and cancer's return must have carried a profound sense of responsibility for you. Also, during the months of editing layout and cover designs, did these tasks transport you back to moments with Sue? Did crafting this book become a path for you to navigate memories while sharing Sue's extraordinary story with the world? What was that experience like?
Mick
It absolutely was rewarding and one of the best experiences of my life. And it started, of course, when Sue was still alive and she had the manuscript in various pieces and she had lots of different writing coaches and helpers, and I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but I was drawn into the process and we worked on the book together and in person and on little retreats we took, and finally over Zoom and I write about that in the afterward because we would talk about something and then, well, one story yields another story, and you know how it is with siblings. There's one thing somebody knows and was that really the way it was? And you know, you know more about Uncle John than I do, and so that was just fun and we would laugh and cry and relive things. So that was a beautiful experience I will always treasure.
And then having her sentences and her stories, and I've thought a lot about this because, editors, you know the collaboration and that's what I do with my students. I always tell them I don't want you to write like me, I want you to write like you, but I'm here to help you write like you. And when you have a manuscript it's not like fixing a watch or you just can't mail it off to an expert. It comes back fixed. That there's a word we're using a lot is intimacy.
I understood how Sue thought and how she understood things, and so I would try to help her think through the choices that she made, and she was always talking to me and so in some ways it was really useful. I just on a personal note, I know after she passed away people would say to me well, we'll make, I hope you have time to grieve, and that's such a good sentiment. I'm such a like self-care idiot. I thought, okay, what does that mean?
And I think it was transformative in the best way. So it was a way for me to channel my my feelings, my deep love for Sue, and that I missed her every day, but then I could read about our childhoods together, you know, and and do something that would make her happy. Sue was not a bucket list person. Every day was a bucket list for her. But she wanted this book published and I got that because I would try to sound her out like do you want to go to France, Do you? You know? No, no, but she wanted this book published. So it's published and it's published beautifully and I think she would be proud and people are reading it and telling me what it means to them, people that she didn't know. And that idea of useful is so important because Sue didn't want to be rich and famous, she wanted to be of use, and this is the way she's being useful now.
Pat
At the heart of this conversation is the question what is the legacy one leaves behind? What imprint do we make through our actions, values and contributions? Mick, what is Sue's lasting legacy?
Mick
Oh boy, there were certainly public ones and we shouldn't neglect those that Sue had very specific ideas about how the court should be reformed and some of her changes were made. She got a lot of pushback, a lot of resistance. But my friends I'm not an attorney, but I have friends in that community, especially in the collaborative community, who tell me that many of Sue's ideas, starting with looking at things from the point of view of the person being served are being implemented.
So those are big structural institutional changes. And she, she went to Russia, she went to Ireland, she spoke and shared the word, she wrote a scholarly article about court reform. So I think there's that. But even more than that, I think, are the people that she touched and the Crystal Gavel.
The anecdote that gives the book its name stems from one woman whose case was heard in front of Sue and she could have treated it in a perfunctory way but she didn't and it changed her life and years later she sent to this gift and there's a wonderful story about it.
But there were many others who she didn't know. And it's like being a teacher, I think, that you put things out there and you hear from the student, but many you don't and I didn't write thank you to all my teachers. I've heard from some of Sue's clerks, people who had cases in front of her. I think her influence is both sort of macro and institutional. But maybe your most enduring legacy is that kind of charge that she passed on to you and to me and we carry it with her and her boys say I know what mom would do. They have to be honest and generous given any particular challenge, because they know mom would be that way. And I think we all have a kind of inter like to think, kind of inner Sue, and that her best parent is being carried on by those of us who are lucky to know her.
Pat
Yeah, as we wind up this part of our conversation, one of the things about Sue was that her humor, delight in learning and ability to deeply listen to others created a gentle force-field of welcome to people she encountered, and you couldn't help but get pulled in. And in the context of her own adversities and cancers, she was tuned in to reducing heartache or pain and other people, especially in her legal work. Her battles didn't define or defeat her. I think they fueled her into action. And one of the things that really struck me is that Sue chose. She chose to live with compassion and joy, like a mirror reflecting the good in others. Even in passing, she continues to invite the best in us.
But, Mick, your unwavering commitment to bringing Sue's remarkable story and enduring legacy to the world is truly awe-inspiring. As the guardian of The Crystal Gavel, you embarked on a sacred journey, painstakingly crafting a narrative that beautifully encapsulates Sue's life. Sue was someone who suffered mutism from kindergarten to law school and I can't help but marvel that Sue has the celebratory last word through her book. She speaks, and you made that possible, Mick. Thank you. Thank you so much. As we wind up our conversation. We now invite comments from our circle of listeners. Jane, take it away.
Jane
Thank you. Well, I wanna echo what Pat said. Thank you so much, mick, for bringing the crystal gavel forward to all of us. And I have a question, and you touched on it, but one of the phrases that you've read that resonated so much for me is that we need to empower people, not overpower them. And I know her spiritual counselor said she clearly had been loved, and you talked about your own love for her and hers, for you and your maternal grandmother. But I wonder, were there other people who empowered her, especially in her younger years? I'd be interested because it seems like she clearly had that those seeds planted in her, probably not from your parents, but from somewhere. So I wondered about that.
Mick
Absolutely yes. One of my favorite chapters in the book is a later chapter about our mom. She calls "The Book of Esther and it's a beautiful appreciation of my mom's creativity. She had great rose gardens and the way she celebrated holidays and it's stuff that I kind of forgot about, to be honest, because I was more into the trauma and the chaos and sort of my mom after she sort of descended into a kind of a sad depression. But Sue had that and our mom read it to us. There's that we had a house full of books and so I think that was a big part of it's something that Sue carried forward, the fact that she could read when she went to kindergarten.
There's a funny but powerful story that's predicated on the fact that she couldn't read fluidly. When she was in kindergarten the teacher didn't realize she could. She had a wonderful French teacher, dr Root, that she writes about, and when Sue was in college studying French language and literature, Dr. Root confronted her out in a quad and said you're such a good reader, you know so much, but you never speak in class. What's going on with you? And Sue said she gave her the headline version of her life. And Dr Root grabs her coat and said I know your life is complex but you need to go to France and study abroad and your brothers are totally capable of taking care of your sick mom. And Sue did go to France on two terms, and for a January term and then for a full semester. So Dr. Root believed in her, and so those are two that I think of right off the bat. And then you know our grandmother. So it's a beautiful story about mothers and daughters, because Sue writes a lot about our mother and then her mother Theresa, our grandmother.
There's something that Sue and I have both written about I put it in the novel and Sue puts it in the memoir is on her deathbed. Our mom, as many people do in hospice, seem to have a kind of otherworldly understanding of things. And she said to both of us we were gathered around her and she said about life. She said the first page and the last page are already written, kind of enigmatically. And then she said and it's up to you to write the middle. And Sue said that came from a place sort of deep in why my first novel ends with a different mother saying that to her, something like that to her daughter.
It's made such a powerful impression. I mean, this character, like my mother's, is dying and these are her last words to her daughter. And in my novel I have the character saying what about the middle? What's the middle? And the last word of the book is her saying love. And I think Sue would have approved of that as well. So again, I think Sue had a way of finding what was there and even painful experiences. She has this kind of tragic comic account of her first time in federal court with me and judge kind of humiliates her and she says this is how not to be, how not to be a judge. She made a point I'm never gonna do that to a young attorney, which is a wonderful way to look at things that even people who are cruel to us can teach us how not to be cruel.
Khang
Thank you. And part of the reason why I was crying so much throughout the podcast, is I have a sister and I think her life could also be described as a litany of wrongs, the things that happened to her, the actions, all of this pain, and she does have that tragic, comic sense that you've been talking about and she has optimism. But I guess that this time when she's in deep, deep despair and I guess as a sister, it's very hard to just be there for her and not try to pull her out of it and not to remind her that she's worthy of something, where it's so hard for her to believe that in herself. So I'm just asking if there's been times like that for you, and what do you do as a sibling?
Mick
Thank you so much for sharing about your sister. I think the sibling love is so profound and they don't make movies about it like they do romantic love and yet it runs so deep, the way we sort of are the keepers of each other's hearts in some ways in histories. I tried to just be there and I think I mean I joke that I would like. When Sue went through cancer and stuff, I know that if she went to chemo with me it made her happy and I was like her companion animal and I didn't have much wisdom, I didn't have any answers but she didn't need answers, but she smiled when she saw me if I walked through the door and I'm sure your sister smiles when she sees you. And I think one of our kids said misheard the phrase only child as lonely child, like, are you a lonely child? And I think maybe the only children are lonely children and it's nice to have someone just to be there to notice.
Sue had the idea that we should collaborate. There's a New York Times has a column called Modern Love and she had this idea that we would collaborate and write a column about sibling love for the Modern Love column. And when we never did it and I think I got hung up on like the point of view that would be weird. Would we say we, you know, I, you. Would we switch back and forth? I mean, that was the English professor in me so we never did it, but maybe you should. I think that would just to reflect on that special bond and you know that you, your sister's hurting and you feel it in your heart. That's a special kind of love and she's lucky to have you.
Pat
Thank you Khang.
Kris
First I just want to resonate what you were saying, mick, and being there. I had the privilege of being there for Sue while she was here in Minnesota and being able to do some personal deliveries of food on a regular basis and my off days and the days that I had pockets of time to scurry over there, take her to an appointment or hang out with the boys and just, you're right. So much wit and humor and how she would spin hardship and find joy in a moment, while we're sitting on the front porch overlooking Diamond Lake in Minneapolis and just pause and say, look, there's a heron out there. Look, look, what the cats are doing, look, and just giving you a sense of pausing for the moment and celebrating what's around and taking her mind off of the things that might have been burdening her heart.
Really, truly a gift to be a part of the family. We share the same grandmother and Mick and I and Sue, of course, and I had moved around too many times to be able to have grown up knowing this beloved grandmother, but the creativity that our grandmother shared was passed on to her, her mom, your mom, mick, my mom, my mom and sisters, and so it's really beautiful to be witness to the manifestations of Sue's creativity and to have the book come to fruition. And all the love that you put into manifesting this book on Sue's behalf, Mick, is a treasure. So much love.
Pavi
So much love indeed, and I feel like it's such a miracle of Sue's life how she was able to fill so many moments with this kind of timeless love that I knew her very much towards the end of her life, but I feel like I've known her forever. How does that work? We have people in the little circle that we started when Sue's diagnosis of cancer came back. We started a little Friday circle that was meant to be a prayer circle that Jane and Kris know, and Pat. And it's funny now because in the circle there are several people who have never met Sue. But she's sort of this like founding presence, we think of her as the hub of the circle and that kind of influence. Like how does that work? How does that force field carry the vibration of a spirit, a soul, into the future, into hearts? It's amazing to me still that I've never met her physically, I've never met Mick in person, but it also feels like it was complete, like there was nothing missing.
And Khang, I was thinking when you were speaking, one of the stories that Sue will share. Maybe we can send it out as a link, because I don't want to substitute Sue's word. She tells the story so beautifully, but in a moment of crisis she called her meditation center and usually the teacher wouldn't answer. But that day the teacher answered and she describes her situation and she says what he said in response to something very simple that stayed with her all her life after. But it was: "Can this be okay?
I think the other extraordinary thing about Sue was her receptivity to what life was presenting her with. I think life can speak to us in so many ways. Do we have? Are we listening for it? Are we ready to hear? And she had this way, and just her antennae were always tuned At least the way I understood how she explained that was like it's already happened, it has to be okay, like there's no point in resisting and so can this be okay?
It was sort of a way of creating a little space, of receiving the moment, and she was bringing that question into a very intense time and for me it was like this real touchstone, like sometimes the question doesn't have to have an answer, the question itself can provide a kind of base, and Sue had a way, I think, of receiving those insights and then being able to almost string them like a garland or like patch them together like a quilt in Jane's language, and there is that the book does seem like something that was, that was in a way, a kintsugi art piece in itself.
The book itself is a kind of kintsugi on paper. The question I had for you was, as someone who you have, like you mentioned, made a career dedicated to your life, you have a calling for writing and teaching writing, and you've written books yourself, and I was wondering can you speak about what it's been like in your experience to release a book into the world? What is the feeling afterwards and what is the feeling with this particular book, you know, is it the same, is it different?
Mick
That's a great question. I think sometimes people will ask me do you think you would do anything differently? And it sounds like it's not self-congratulation, but with none of my books that I ever think I would, and partly it's just that by the time a book is done I thought this was the best book I could write at the time and it's a little bit of a snapshot, kind of a time capsule. But you spend so much time at the end I've said this about my books and I would say this about it's almost impossible to read it. I could probably recite it from the first word to the last word because I've been over it looking for typos and that sort of thing. So there's this deep, deep, almost obsessive intimacy with it. But beyond that I've described it as having a kid go off to kindergarten and you hope that there's no bullies there first of all and that no critic or somebody will beat up your beloved offspring. But what happens is it's got a life of its own and it makes friends and it to me that is the most miraculous, beautiful letting go ever.
My friend Ron, who's a collaborative attorney, wrote a beautiful piece for the book and is in the legal community, called me up and read a Facebook post by someone who was an attorney and I said I don't know who this is.
And they said I just read the most beautiful book last night, The Crystal Gavel. by Sue Cochrane.
And it just went on and on and he sounded kind of annoyed that he didn't personally know this reader of The Crystal Gavel.
I think, well, no, get used to it, because it's going to happen.
And I have this fantasy of putting books in free libraries and you know, think of all the books that find their way to us in these mystical and beautiful ways through recommendation or library. And so to me that is just kind of a wonderful experience and I think of how I have found the right book for me at the right time again and again and again. And maybe a life changing book or a book that gives me comfort or wisdom or makes me feel not alone or scared when I'm going through something. And I can see Sue's book being that to all kinds of people, to a parent of a special needs child or someone struggling with alcoholism or someone struggling with cancer diagnosis or an attorney, just anyone trying to live a meaningful life, and so it's sort of I don't know what it's just sort of like a joyful letting go is what it feels like to me, and I feel maybe exactly the same way about Sue's book is I have about my four books, maybe only more so.
And because it's kind of great, because it's it's her name on the cover, so to even just to give it to someone doesn't feel like it could be a statistical or self serving. You know this is a great book and you know it might really speak to you, so that's kind of great.
Pavi
Beautiful. If I can ask just one follow up question, it seems like you said she didn't have a bucket this but this was something she really wanted out in the world and it feels like there was no other person who could have stewarded it into the world. In a way that was a. It was like it was a huge responsibility and privilege, and now that it is in the world, I imagine there's some space that has been created, and is it a quiet space right now or is there something else you feeling pulled by or drawn towards?
Mick
I did occupy the creative lobe of my brain. So that was it, and I have some writing projects. I, late in life, I've taken ready poetry and I've got half scroll the phone memos that won't want to be poems and maybe another narrative. I'm going to come back to my own things and let's see what that takes this. I have enjoyed every second devoted to this and to be able to talk about it. I mean just, it's been so meaningful and really, really wonderful.
Pavi
Thank you, all of it.
Pat
Thank you, Mick. Thank you circle of listeners for such a moving and oh-so-Sue like conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you Listeners. Thank you for joining us today. If you like the podcast. Tell your friends and spread the word. Thanks.
