I just spent the most extraordinary 4 days at the Art of Dying conference, run by the New York Open Center. One of the hot topics was the new scientific understanding of consciousness. Pim Van Lommel, a Dutch cardiologist explained that consciousness is no longer believed to reside in the brain, or even the…
Eternal Love
They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can spirits ever be divided, that love and live in the same divine principle, the root and record of their friendship. If absence be not death, neither is theirs. Death is but crossing the world, as friends…
Laura’s Choice
You may have gotten two versions of my Peter Fenwick post yesterday. I posted one version called Scientific Proof – As If Any Was Needed, but ‘someone else’ (I suspect my beloved mischievous Laura) hit publish on an earlier draft called Dying Well (the version printed below). This draft contains a paragraph about all the…
Dying Well
If you buy one book on dying make it this one. British neurologist Peter Fenwick’s extraordinary The Art of Dying lends scientific credence to all the weird paranormal phenomena I’ve experienced while Laura lay dying last year and in the 15 months since. Fenwick spent nearly 40 years reviewing thousands of death bed phenomena; lights…
Dance Break
What a riot. I just tried a Zumba class and couldn’t stop laughing. Laura would have loved it. On one of our first dates we danced non stop for 3 hours and ran through Laura’s entire iTunes library. In today’s Zumba class, I felt like Naomi Watts in While We’re Young trying to look cool in hip…
The Bee Cure
Spring is my favorite season, but I used to burst out in a symphony of sneezing fits, runny eyes and streaming nose the the moment the spring blooms arrived. Then I discovered a teaspoon-a-day of Bee Pollen cured my hay fever. It works best if you also quit mucous-producing dairy too. Last year I bought…
Mother Teresa
The modern hospice movement is usually credited to Britain’s Dame Cicly Saunders who opened St Christopher’s hospice in London in 1967. But what about Mother Teresa? In 1952 she created the Khalighat home for the dying in an abandoned Hindu temple in Calcutta. It was a free hospice for the poor and the homeless. All comers…
Good News.
The surgeon is going to do ‘watchful waiting’ with mum’s aneurysms. He is not even going to treat her leg clot (a possible break off piece from the aneurysm) as he said the contrast dye used in the angioplasty operation would hurt her kidneys. So it is back to natural remedies and lots of love,…
The Grace in Dying
Kathleen Dowling Singh, a former hospice worker and author of The Grace in Dying writes: “Dying .. softens us, opens us. In the course of living with terminal illness, our inner experience begins to change in nature. As our grasp loosens, we may begin to experience a more spontaneous forgiveness, a deepening love, and a pervasive sense…
Laura’s Gifts
I love birds. But I’ve never had one land on me before. Once a cat fell out of a tree onto my shoulders, but I don’t think that counts. And then today….I got two birds at once! It was a particularly sweet experience because when I left my apartment this morning I said to Laura…
The Vatican’s Spiritual Approval
I just learned that the Vatican approves of our talking to deceased loved ones. The Reverend Gino Concetti, chief theological commentator for the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore, told the British newspaper The Observer: “Communication is possible between those who live on this earth and those who live in a state of eternal repose, in heaven or…
Anyone For Tennis?
I am in Palm Springs for work this week. I’ve always loved this tumbleweed town with its low slung modernist houses and desert rat concrete bunker architecture. It is an odd mix of beautiful and bonkers. Tomorrow I’m visiting Bob Hope’s estate (on the market for $25 million). The house looks like a cross between…
Soul Love Forever 