Life is Your Story

Have you ever returned to the home of a loved one after they have passed? To the room they most enjoyed? The study, the kitchen, the bedroom, the garden? When you return to the stillness, the silence, you find yourself looking for them. You search the place from bottom to top, hoping for another chance to see them, hear their voice, touch them, laugh with them. There's a hat or jacket or blanket or pen or book or laptop that they last touched.  Their scent is still in the air. Something left undone, lingers on a desk or kitchen table. They are nowhere to be found, yet, still, you remain seated, as if waiting for a play or show to begin. You ask yourself the same questions that have been asked for ages, for all of time, where has my friend/parent/lover gone? Will I ever see them again? Do they know I love them? What was the last thing I said to them? What was the last thing they said to me? And it goes on and on. There is something comforting about visiting a place that was sacred 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...

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