I’m afraid I am going to be insufferable from now on. And you may have to curtsey next time you meet me. After a little rummaging around in our ancestor closet, it turns out that via my mother’s beloved grandmother we can travel back through a long line of Earls to King Edward the 1st…
Reaching for the Stars
What message would you send up into space to contact life forms on another planet? Welcome?.. What’s up?…We come in peace? A bunch of US scientists has spent 40 years trying various approaches. All to no avail. (according to the New York Times article Greetings ET (Please Don’t Murder Us). So far the scientists have…
The Art of Dying Conference Discount
The Open Center just gave me – and my readers (i.e. YOU!) – a terrific discount for the Art of Dying Conference in New York (Oct 13-16). Instead of paying $545 for the 3-day conference, the cost is just $200. You can attend in person or stream it online. If you are interested in what happens…
The Soul in Transition
I love stories about the miraculous and sometimes comical events that surround the soul’s transition from this life to the next. Dr Ona Graham, whose husband Ralph died from throat cancer, shared with me some precious stories of his final days. Ralph wanted to see his two beloved horses again before he died. But try as…
One More Day
I’ve often imagined what it would be like to have one more day with Laura. One last chance to look into her eyes and be together as we once were. What would we do? How would we spend those precious hours together? Evidently it is a common fantasy of the bereaved. ‘Meet Me at Dawn‘…
Memories
A Sunday lunch in France that lasts 2-4 hours is not uncommon. Food is pleasure, love and sharing. So it was no surprise to learn that my friend Veronique spent nearly a month cooking dishes for her own wedding (a 3 day feast in early August). Family and friends contributed wines, deserts, heart shaped…
A Life Wish
Do I have a death wish? Quite the contrary. I just want to feel alive again. I nearly lost my own life 10 years ago and I lost Laura nearly four years ago. And so life is very precious to me. I want to feel my own essence, my own being very intensely. And so…
Patchwork Heart
Sometimes my patchwork heart aches so. So many pieces missing. So many scars and repairs. How do we go on? Sometimes, like last Friday, joy evaporates and is replaced with a rush of pain and then the ooze of black bilious anger that seeps out of every pore when I feel dread fear combined with…
What Really Happened?
I’ve finally got it. It has taken three and a half years to solve two important mysteries. And now I’ve got it. The night Laura passed, I had what Dr Raymond Moody calls a ‘Shared Death Experience’ in his book Glimpses of Eternity: Sharing a Loved One’s Passage From This Life To the Next. Let…
My Summer Office
Little baby sparrows keep falling out of the magnolia tree that canopies me. A yellow swallowtail butterfly and a monarch dance around my bare feet. I’m sitting in my summer office – basically a folding chair in my local park with my laptop perched on the armrest. To me it’s bliss. A few feet in…
Unexpected Gifts
When time collapses. When a terminal diagnosis enters stage left, it can feel oddly as if the sweetness of life is condensed. Or as one woman put it in A Time To Live, (a British documentary about 12 people, mostly in mid-life, who have been given a terminal diagnosis): ‘The colors are brighter, the trees are greener,…
The Music Inside
We are such stuff as music is made of. We are composed of vibrations; of waves of energy that ebb and flow, and particles that leap and jiggle. A few years ago, social worker Dan Cohen discovered that music could unlock the minds of shut down, depressed and inert alzheimers and dementia patients, (mostly people…
Meditation – Am I Doing It Right?
I’ve meditated for 15 years. I used to wonder; ‘Am I doing it right?’ And ‘What is the purpose?’ My first instructor was a Buddhist. ‘Emptiness is the goal,’ she said. That felt wrong to me. It felt like I was trying to rid myself of myself During my very first attempt at meditating I…
Rescuing Emily
The movie A Quiet Passion has to be one of the worst biopics I’ve ever seen (in a category stuffed with more turkey’s than Perdue). It nearly managed to obliterate the memory of Emily Dickinson’s delicate and beautiful poetry (‘hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul’ is no where to be found)….
The Alchemy of Love
Sir Anthony Seldon, a British schoolmaster and political author, recently described the beautiful alchemy that transforms love at the end of life. His wife Joanna died of cancer in December 2016. ” The illness might have withered her body, but it strengthened our love and faith. Never had we known such profound physical intimacy and romance…
Soul Love Forever 