They seemed to know. The swallows began an arial ballet outside my living room window the moment I opened my laptop to mourn. Ten of them, maybe 15 acrobats, engaged in a celebration, perhaps. Maybe a tribute. It transported me back to my grandmother’s last day. I was wheeling her along in the sunshine outside of the hospital when a …
I should have been in Wahpeton Tuesday. I should have been at the funeral of my best childhood friend, Max Reinke. But I just couldn’t take another funeral right now. I’ve been to too many lately. But luckily, my friend Kevin Carvell says, none of them were mine. I know, it’s just a function of my age (soon to be …
It’s been 10 years since that night I left Ian’s basketball game at halftime because I knew I needed to go to the nursing home to see Steve. Driving through snow and bitter cold because I knew that was where I was supposed to be. When I walked in, he wasn’t responsive, but I’ve been around death enough to know …
I wrote here a few weeks ago that you can’t really understand COVID-19 until you’ve sat at the bedside of a good friend on a ventilator. I can say now that even then I did not understand it completely until I buried that good friend this past week. Until I watched that coffin being slowly lowered into the ground, as we all …
Over the years, I’ve often been asked by individuals how they can most effectively help those who are most directly touched by the death of a loved one. As a result, I’ve come up with a list of Do’s and Don’ts when it comes to dealing with grief. It is based on conversations I have had with people who have …
Marti was a rescue dog. We found her through “Petfinder.com.” My youngest son, Ian, was a huge Peanuts fan, and he really wanted a Beagle, and I found a Beagle/Terrier cross at the Hawk Creek Animal Shelter in my hometown of Willmar, Minn. It felt like serendipity. I had grown up in WIllmar with a Beagle/(we are pretty sure) Terrier cross, …
For my mother, who taught me how to love. Mom had PPA, a rare brain disorder for which there is no cure. It caused her to slowly lose her ability to recall the names of well, most everything eventually. One important distinction between PPA and other memory conditions like Alzheimer’s was that only very rarely and only inside the last …
I grew up Catholic, and Good Friday meant “Stations of the Cross.” Mass and a somber day. I always wondered as a kid why it was often dark and rainy. Did God know? One thing you never, ever say, “Happy Good Friday,” on this day, ever. Today we feel gratitude. Today we remember. It’s also true that my mother died …
I’m deeply grateful to my friend, Sid Ansbacher, for restoring this memory of my brother, Steve, and my friend, Fred Rogers. I hadn’t read this or thought of it for years until Sid recently shared it with a friend on Facebook. It is from the fall of 1998, when Steve was diagnosed with lung cancer that would take his life …
Note: This is a re-run of something I wrote seven years ago today, Sept. 11, 2011. Yes, it has been a long 10 years. On Aug. 29, 2001, I sat beside my wife’s bed as she looked up at her doctor, exhausted, pale and gaunt after two years of unrelenting chemotherapy, and said, “No more. No more chemo.” Quietly, the …
T. S. Elliot wrote that April is the cruelest month, but I’d argue that. It comes in the winter. Winter is more than a metaphor for the twilight of a life, the final whirl of child’s windup toy as the coiled spring inside releases the last of its energy and it freezes in suspended animation, a monument to a life …
Like birth, I think the hour of our death is very meaningful, whether our earthly minds allow us to solve the puzzle or not. It is drenched in meaning, here and also somewhere else. The year, month, day, hour and second — it is already written for each of us. I think I’m lucky in that I can see the light of …
“Well I’ll be damned, here comes your ghost again …” — Joan Baez “Diamonds and Rust” I am now going to write about one of the most painful chapters of my long life. I am going to remember David. David Ohm. Dead these 40 years now. I can hardly believe that when I write it. And write this story I shall, …