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LEILA FADEL, HOST:
It's Friday and time for StoryCorps. At 59, Karan Founds-Benton had raised a family and was spending her time volunteering on Skid Row in Los Angeles. Then she needed help herself. She sat down for an interview at StoryCorps.
KARAN FOUNDS-BENTON: One day, I was sweeping the house, and suddenly I coughed up blood. My friend took me into the emergency room, and what I believed they were going to say was, oh, you just have a little benign cloud in your lung, and it'll go away. But instead, to my surprise, a very nervous resident came in and said, I'm afraid this is cancer, and we'll just make you comfortable because there's really not anything we can do.
He walked out of the room, and I laid there, and I waited for this moment of grief to come over me. And I waited, and I waited. And it wouldn't happen. Instead, this feeling of gratefulness over everything in my life just washed over me.
My brother came to see me afterwards, and he asked me, what do you want to do, jump out of a parachute, travel? And I couldn't think of anything. I realized I have done everything I've ever wanted to do, and it surprised me. And so I decided to go into some clinical trials because I didn't want to waste my cancer. I wanted to make good use.
One day, I was down there in pain, and I was sitting in the waiting room, and they brought a young woman in a wheelchair. I could tell that she had been through so much. She was thin and fragile and just so tired. But she was looking at me with serenity, and I thought, you are still beautiful. I looked at her, and she looked at me and this tenderness went across the room.
When I came home from the hospital, I just stayed out in the garden. I put my hand down and picked up handfuls of soil. I ran this soil through my fingers, and this longing to be a part of that came over me. Even though we think of death as a totally passive thing, I felt this sort of joy in realizing that, yes, I can do this. I can become a part of the Earth.
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FADEL: Karan Founds-Benton in Los Angeles for StoryCorps. She died two years after this recording in 2018. Her interview is archived at the Library of Congress.
(SOUNDBITE OF EDWARD HOGSTON'S "LOSING YOU") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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