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I attended a memorial service last week for a man who lived an extraordinary life cut short by a fatal brain cancer at 75. It was at the same time a memorial service and a memorial of service. His name is—and I say ‘is’ not ‘was’ –because it was clear by the remarks of each […]
Continue ReadingMy younger sister Jolie and I are five years apart. We were playmates from the beginning, and it seems that her maturity accelerated to keep up with mine. I got a cellphone after years of waiting, and the next week she got a cellphone. When it comes to a Verizon Wireless family package, five years […]
Continue ReadingDenial makes things a blur. I know that I plunged myself to those depths of unfeeling because I wanted to survive, and on good days, I can forgive myself for it. I must have been there for over a year, when I could smell a musty, old dream of college – long forgotten in the […]
Continue ReadingWhen I was a young boy in Brooklyn in the early 1950s, I vividly recall a man on the block rolling up his sleeve and showing me a blue tattoo of a numbers running up his forearm.The meaning of this had to be explained to me. I was perhaps five years old, but it left […]
Continue ReadingLisa and I just returned from the annual meeting of ADEC, the Association for Death Education and Counseling. This was our first time, and we were enormously impressed. ADEC is an international, professional organization dedicated to promoting excellence and recognizing diversity in death education, care of the dying, grief counseling and research in thanatology. Based on quality research, […]
Continue ReadingGrief is a very painful emotion and can cause great distress. For older people it can even be especially difficult to experience. Grief if prolonged can lead to depression and even physical illness. Grief from the death of a loved one is a response to the loss of that person’s presence in our lives. The […]
Continue ReadingIn case you are tired of hearing from me about grieving during the upcoming holidays , I found some other voices you might want to listen to. Jamie Greenbaum writes most eloquently about her husband’s death from cancer. This article appears in the Huffington Post’s website and discusses her first Thanksgiving after her husband’s death. […]
Continue ReadingMANAGING YOUR OWN GRIEF DURING THE HOLIDAYS – THIS IS ANOTHER RE-RUN OF AN EARLIER POST IN ANTICIPATION OF THE UPCOMING HOLIDAYS My co-Founder Lisa suggested this. So nobody you know took my advice and called to include you in their holiday plans. Sorry that didn’t work out.. And you were too reluctant to reach […]
Continue ReadingThis is a modified rerun of a post I did last December. It’s about the helping the grieving during the holidays. I did several them, and over the next few days will republish them as we approach two holidays, Easter and Passover, that are observed by the entire family, and are therefore especially problematic for […]
Continue ReadingI know I’m more than half right about this, so please bear with me. In mathematics there’s a concept called proportionality. Directly portortional means that if you travel faster, you’ll go farther. Inversely proportional means that the more people you have digging a ditch, the sooner it will be done. Grief is, for most of […]
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