I pray that our societal near-death experience gives us a shift in perspective, and that we don’t simply recover but transform through it.
Tag: death
John and I spent part of our autumn vacation giving retirement a test drive.
Vacation is typically synonymous with the “not working” part of retiring, so what was noteworthy was staying in a Santa Fe retirement community with our neighbor, Charles.
Few people are brave enough to own their honest story in the way Jojo did, even fewer would put it on their business website. I asked for her permission to share her story of finding happiness through trial and error and eventually getting brave enough to listen to her heart.
I’m grateful she and Rachel both said yes so I can share with you this story of loving hard.
Death has been close to me recently. Our neighbor died, my dad’s brother died, a business school classmate died. I am aware of our mortality but these various losses have brought that difficult truth front and center. In this already vulnerable state, I read Laurie Anderson’s farewell to Lou Reed in Rolling Stone. It seems every journalist and musician had…
It can be tough to know what to say when someone close to you has lost a job or gotten a terrible diagnosis. When my mom died, I was taken aback by some of the things people said. They were trying to be supportive, to connect with me in my time of grief, but sometimes it just amplified the hurt…
John and I recently spent a day in Woodstock, that small New York state town best known for the music festival that shares its name. As we wrapped up brunch at the lovely Oriole9, we saw this huge chalkboard in their entry way: It called to mind Jennifer Worick’s recent Blogversation question: What is the one thing in life that…
A friend recently lost his wife. She was just 47 when she was hit by a car and died.
After getting a divorce a few years back, my friend had remarried and was as giddy as a high school girl talking about his new wife. His eyes twinkled when he talked about her influence on his health, his home and his outlook on life.
I never met his new wife, but my heart gets hot and my eyes tear up when I think about these two people just having found each other, then having it suddenly, unexpectedly, end.
Editor’s note: This post gets a lot of traffic from people searching phrases like “mothers day wishes for someone who lost their mom.” I love that so many of you are looking to offer your love and support, and would personally suggest following your heart with something simple like “Thinking of you and your mom today,” or “Are you doing…
Editor’s note: Lisa and I are friends in part because we’ve lived parallel lives. We’re both Michigan natives living the life of a Manhattan suit. We both endured a relationship failure that helped us redefine what we wanted out of life. And we both lost our mothers at 51. Lisa saw my post on the anniversary of my mom’s death…
Leading up to Thanksgiving, each day I will blog about what I’m doing to be more grateful. I invite you to join me, and to share your thoughts, observations, suggestions and ideas. Day 22: Finding gratitude while we grieve It’s been a sad weekend for us. On Friday, we put down our 18-year-old cat, suffering from advanced heart disease. Then…
I adopted Haley when I was a senior in college. It was fall 1991, right around the first time I heard Nirvana. She proved to be an odd cat almost immediately. When I got home from working at the college newspaper late at night, I tried to get her to come to bed with me. She would have none of…
Grumpy old man Carl Fredricksen is an unlikely cartoon hero — his wife has just died, developers want to tear down his house, and after he beats one of the developers with his cane, a court order is about to send him to a nursing home. “Up” is a cartoon that tackles some grown-up themes: love, loss, change, the evaluation of how you’ve…