Life is Your Story

 I am walking along a path somewhere in the wilderness. I’m alone at first but then I feel someone’s presence, someone who vanished from my life. I think about all the people I have met and loved, yet there was nothing as intense, as omni-powerful as the connection of which I speak. Sometimes I wonder if some people are meant to only visit us once in our lives, because what they hold in their hands, their offering, is so sacred, so special that the moments of time, find it unbearable to hold onto them – to grasp them in their wholeness. So, I am on this walk and I have that feeling in my gut and I come around a bend and there he is, that person who vanished from this earth we walk upon and for whom I have waited to pass to the other side, so he can visit me in my dreams. But this is not a dream. This is not a hologram. This is not an illusion. This is him. This is what I have been waiting for, hoping for because I really never got to say a proper goodbye. I wasn’t there to kiss his...

As we grow older the pool of people we meet and befriend becomes larger and more diversified. Some are just acquaintances while others have been there during the worst crisis of our lives. I have witnessed people truly coming together in support and out of compassion for one another and it is a beautiful thing. I volunteer as a facilitator of support groups for those suffering from mental illness as well as their caregivers. Often the people that attend my groups are living in a psychiatric ward or have just been discharged. Many of the participants were or are admitted at the same time and so they become familiar with one another. This provides them with a common ground and a shared understanding of the pain and daily challenges they all face. They don’t pretend to be someone they are not. They are past the stage of disguises and stories and fake images. They are exhausted but they are fighters and they deal with the very essence of survival in the bleakest of moments. Through t...

When you witness death, life no longer scares you. You find yourself comparing the end to the beginning. You forget that it’s the middle that counts because that is where everything happens. When you are waiting for your phone to ring and you are on a marathon of hospital runs and standing in elevators where everyone looks down instead of up; you transform into a shackled zombie shuffling along a single track always looking over your shoulder for an oncoming train. By the bedside watching a loved one slip away, you are reminded of how they lived. Tiny snapshots expand into full cinematic view. The heart rate machine seizes to reach its highs and lows and collapses into one final long beep. The oxygen mask is removed and your entire childhood slips through the palm of your hand leaving your soul robbed and barren. You die a little each day but on this day you die more. If there is one thing you learn from death; it is this: The beginning is for learning. The...

There are dark cold days when nothing falls into place and my heart drops and my mind spins. I can’t grasp onto anything or anyone. There is no exit from the heavy sorrow that fills and overflows seeping through my pores. There are slices of light and seconds of sun that lift me and push me upward and allow me to breathe fuller and escape what seems to be the unrelenting noise of my thoughts. And between these states of dark and light, between the flow of the ocean and the moon rising, I reach out and search for those I’ve lost, those I’ve loved, those I will never touch, see, hug, hold again in this life. I can’t find them because I don’t know where they are only that they are somewhere around me with me watching over me moving forward with me and forever connected to me.   When I close my eyes I see them and sometimes in my dreams I hear them. They are telling me they are okay and they will be there for me, they wait for me, their arms ...

If you sit down on the grass in the sun with the wind quietly purposefully listening for spirits of souls you have loved you will hear them if you let your mind at ease and stop thinking they will come to you and speak with a whisper you will feel them in the tall grass with your fingertips their voices will tell you they miss you as much as you miss them they'll surround you before they leave you they won't tell you where they are going just that you can't follow you'll stand up and walk away and just when you think they will never return the wind will blow the sun will shine and somewhere in the distance you will hear a hum

In the Jewish religion it is traditional to “Walk around the block” at the end of the Shiva/mourning period. As a Rabbi recently explained to my family, it is a way of saying “we are finished mourning and are returning the community rather than having the community come to us.” For me, the “walk around the block” symbolizes the circle of life and the hard, cold fact that life goes on. You lose someone you love. You open your home to friends and family and people who come out of the woodwork that you never imagined seeing. You sit on low chairs that are hard as rock and your back aches, your legs cramps and your neck becomes stuck in an unnatural upright position. There are swarms of well-meaning people who “close talk” and touch and even kiss and hug you although if you ran into them on the street such acts of affection in many cases would not take place. People come to pay their respects for different reasons. Some have recently lost a parent and can relate to the awful,...

Towels of my life. 3 yrs old, cold, shivering, running out of the gated kids area at Blossom Pool, my mother, kneeling, open towel, wrap around me, warm, fabric softener scent, hug, love, safe. Guest - friends country house - age 11 - weekend in winter - new discovery - some families have two houses - one for the week - one for the weekend - we don't - here is the guestroom, here is the washroom and here is your towel - large, plush - it may even be new - yes I think they gave me a new towel - welcome. Boyfriend - Me - first shower with someone other than myself - towel on, towel off - all weekend long - fun, exciting, daring - and lots of towels. Grandmother - MS - confined to bed for 30 years - paralyzed from neck down - forehead as in head as in only part of body she can feel - heating up - fever - me 16,towel - cold water - hold gently on her against her forehead - brush of fingers to her cheek - does she know I love her? - does she know I wish I could fix her? - get a...