On a bitter March afternoon after my Chinese government seminar at Cornell, I hurry down the hill toward Seneca Street. I stomp up the crooked wooden steps to Vic’s apartment, grateful to be out of the wind.
Read more →Bereavement and End of Life
Her brows scrunched together and her hand covered her mouth to hide her feelings. Her eyes said she was saying something important, but I wasn’t wearing my hearing aids and heard nothing. Not a sound. Blank space.
Read more →On a September afternoon in 1966, when I was a 21 year old student at Cornell, I met an older man—he was 25—in a motorcycle shop in Ithaca. His muscular body arched over the skeleton of an
Read more →“I asked Liz to marry me,” my older son David says on the phone. I hear the drone of engine noise, so I know he’s driving home from a weekend trip. “What did she say?” I tease,
Read more →On August 27, 2012, people from all over New York State marched to the capital building in Albany and delivered 3,200 pledges to resist fracking to Governor Andrew Cuomo. Hundreds of small environmental organizations joined under the
Read more →Being alone was all right, as long as nobody came and left again. — Das Blauekleid (The Blue Dress) by Doris Doerrie, translated by Ellen Schmidt At 1:00 am, I look out my bedroom window and see
Read more →Pie is community glue, its very own language of love. “That blueberry looks just like the pie my grandma baked,” one grizzly old guy tells me at the Hector Fireman’s Fair. I grin and laugh and ask
Read more →When will the house need a roof? When does the septic tank need pumping? How do I hook up the generator when the power goes out? How many cords of firewood do we burn each winter? Do
Read more →“Go ahead. Arrange and rearrange the stones on top of your beloved’s grave. Keep arranging those stones for as long as it hurts to do it, then stop just before you really want to. Put the
Read more →I recently discovered an outstanding website and blog titled Grief Healing by Marty Tousley, CNS-BC, FT, DCC. Marty has been a bereavement counselor at Phoenix, AZ’s Hospice of the Valley since 1996 and launched her website in
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