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Dedicated to my mother, Florence November 11, 1920 - May 25, 2005 The Passing of the Torch She lies in peaceful repose on her back with her hands, one atop the other, gently resting on her tummy. Those hands that loved to play the piano, taught me how to make the most delicious fudge, brushed my hair, held hundreds of books, gracefully parted the air during Tai Chi practice, pounded a career of typewriters, peeled logs in preparation for their new home, produced many a midnight sewing machine creation and, most importantly, held her children close to her heart....

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Do you spend most of your time inside or outside of your body? If you know what I'm talking about then I can almost certainly say that you have spent some time outside of your body. What does it even mean to "be outside" of one's body? Well, in order to appreciate what this means you must have an experience of your "Self" first and then you must be able to "feel" where that "Self" is geographically speaking. So let's start with the first part. In order to get an experience of your "Self" think of some quality or characteristic that you like about yourself....

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Not long after Arlyn died, my husband and I decided to attend a support group program run by the local Hospice organization. We felt lost, afraid, and alone, and we desperately needed to understand the emotional roller coaster we were on. We had arrived early; all of the seats were empty. After I glanced at my husband, to make sure he had not turned around and walked out, we sat down quietly on the seats closest to us and to the door. Shortly after we arrived, a few other people wandered in and took seats also....

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Few of us care to think about the inevitability of our own demise. We except that we are not immortal, however for the most part, we are successful in putting thoughts of our own death from our mind. When those close to us die, we painfully become aware of the fragility of life and as we contemplate our own mortality, two things become very clear. 1. We do not want a painful death, and 2. We do not want to die in hospital. Circumstances may prevent us from achieving these goals - we may be involved in a traffic accident, become a victim of crime, suffer a heart attack or stroke and be taken to hospital;...

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No one likes to think about illness and death, when we are well, we feel invincible and there is nothing that can prepare us for the shock and devastation of a terminal diagnosis. The knowledge that we can no longer take our lives or the lives we share with our loved ones for granted takes away our ability to plan for the future and removes hope from our lives. When a loved one becomes terminally ill, we grieve in anticipation of their death, we grieve for the loss of them in our lives and we grieve for our own mortality....

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I've always waited for the perfect moment to be happy: As though time were a flower waiting to bloom. My scruffy puppy-happy senior dog knows better. Watching his tail wag as he stands in the middle of a mud puddle, I now understand that happiness is where your heart is, not just where your legs travel. Last summer we moved into the house of our dreams: Beautiful, big and by a football-sized off-leash dog park. Finally a chance for my Border collie cross, Tucker, to exercise his herding instincts by running ahead of me across an expansive field....

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Remember the Eulogy projects we had to write back in High School? Death is a tough subject to broach, and many would rather deny death then embrace it. Someone once said, "...There are only two guarantees in life: Death and Taxes." How true is this phrase? It is normally when we are faced with the imminence of dying or death that we only begin making plans or arrangements for our transition. Having firsthand knowledge, it is very difficult to experience the physical death or passing of a loved one....

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Over the years, I've heard many people voice their concerns of death and dying. It wasn't that they had any maladies that would cause them to die any time soon, but they were "afraid of their own immortality." The basic idea of death, or the potential of death, created a mind-numbing fear that, in some cases, forced them into isolation to avoid anything that could increase their chances of dying. Although this might sound like a gruesome topic, it is important, as one of the most common situations associated with a fear of dying is actually a "fear of living....

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September 11, 2001, marked yet another significant turning point in world history. Whatever innocence was left in the world was lost on that fateful day. On lesser numeric scales, equally heinous crimes are committed against humanity virtually every day of the year. What is happening in the world? It is difficult to explain. Somehow the perpetrators of the most evil and disgusting crimes have been stripped of the virtue of mercy. It would seem that their basic humanity is simply missing. The memory of those planes crashing into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and the one that crashed into the Pennsylvanian field, will be etched into people's minds forever....

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Oh, we can talk about the best cold medications and if cherry cough syrup tastes better to kids than orange. We can recommend preschools and sneakers. But the hardest part of parenting is the least often discussed. The roughest aspect of being a parent is losing a child. Then we clam up. We don't want to hear. We are threatened. If her child died, mine could, too. What can we do when parenting goes beyond the normal expectations? "What do I say?" friends ask me with a look of agony in their eyes....

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