Alley Life - Part Two

A whole other world exists in my son's neighborhood once the sun goes down. I know this because I just visited Denver again, where he and his wife live in an 11-unit downtown apartment building.I was up in the small hours for two reasons. First, they have no air conditioning, so I was sitting on their front balcony drying off and enjoying the cool night air. I also had to catch an early-morning flight, so going back to bed seemed pointless.

I heard what sounded like a party going on somewhere nearby. It seemed close, but I couldn't see anybody. Just voices. From that noise I picked out the sound of two people talking, a man and a woman. He was pouring out his heart to her. Of course I considered going inside and giving them their privacy, but I have to admit I was riveted. He loved her! He couldn't live without her! He'd waited his whole life for her! Silence. She clearly didn't feel the same way. My heart hurt for him. It was as if I was right there in the room with them, that's how clear the sound was. I wanted to give him a hug. Poor guy. And then....the sound of the laugh track. Turns out I was listening to a re-run of Cheers, playing on the TV in the apartment one balcony over.

Bu t wait! At that moment the can man came by. He was having a good night. His grocery cart was stuffed with cans, and so were the bags he had hanging from the sides and underneath. Perhaps that's why he didn't try very hard. He wheeled up the alley, peered into the dumpster, tossed an empty peanut butter jar and a fast food bag out onto the cement, then let the dumpster lid clang down, wiped his hands on the front of his t-shirt, and continued on his way.

That dumpster is the site of a lot of city life. Arguments happen there, along with transactions I've described in previous blogs. On this night, though, all was quiet once the can man left. Even the TV was off next door. For a quarter of an hour it was just me and a tiny bird waking up and singing in the branches of a tree not two feet from my face. At
4 a.m. the garbage trucks arrived with their backing beep and their diesel fumes. But for just a moment, Denver and I were at peace.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXyeS-jZSpA

Choose Your Moment

This week I heard from a man who related to me how he had been at the bedside of a dying friend.

"I slept in the living room where she rested on a recliner for two full days," he told me. "She was not responding.  When I gently touched her and said, 'It’s OK to let go,'  she showed a weak version of her beautiful smile.  I left the room for just a minute or two.  When I returned, she had passed."

There's so much about death that we don't understand, and in many cases there isn't a thing we can do about it. I'm thinking of the sudden car crash or a fall off the roof. But in researching my book, Gift of Death, A Message of Comfort and Hope, one thing I heard over and over again was how much say people do have in choosing their actual moment of passing over.

You may ask yourself why anybody would choose to die alone like the man's friend, but if you think about it, death can be a very intimate and private experience. I believe some people are just more comfortable slipping away without an audience. The reasons for this must be as varied as the people experiencing death.

In a recent interview I heard death described as an intrusion, and it certainly is. It interrupts life as we know it and once it's over nothing is ever the same. So that would make it the ultimate transformative experience, whether it's happening to you or to somebody you love. .

 It's what you do with that transformation that makes all the difference. On this Father's Day I am thinking of my own dad who has been gone for two years now. As I describe in my book, his last actions on earth were focused on those he loved rather than himself. I can't know what happened to him in the moments after he died, although I feel certain that he's doing just fine.

But what I do know is his death transformed my life, and sent me in a different direction both spiritually and actually. I think of this every time I face an audience and talk about death as a gift. For me, fear is gone, God is close, and so is my dad.

Coincidence? No Such Thing

I have been speaking about my book, Gift of Death, for months now, and never really saw the title. When I was getting ready to publish I asked everybody I knew what they would call it, then I chose the three most popular suggestions and put them out on Facebook for my friends to vote on.

Gift of Death was not my first choice. I think I wanted something that didn't even have the word "death" in it. I thought it might be off-putting. I wanted something that would make people actually pick up the book because they were so intrigued, and then, hopefully, read it. I didn't want to scare people off. But the response was overwhelmingly in favor of Gift of Death, so that's what I went with.

Yesterday I was taking notes and was abbreviating the title rather than write it over and over again, and here's what that looked like: GOD. How could I have gone that long without noticing? I don't know the answer to that, but I do know this. The book as been nothing but a blessing. Coincidental? I don't think so.

I never really feel my age. Actually, that's not true. When I've spent too long driving and I have to uncurl myself from behind the wheel I do feel it. But most of the time I still feel young and fit. That's why it surprised me to see that John F. Kennedy would have been 100 years old on May 29th.

It surprised me because I remember the young president. Mainly I remember the day he died, because my mother cried on that day, something I rarely saw. I have a very vivid memory, at four years old, of sitting before the television with my brother, watching as the slain president's funeral cortege passed by. It's difficult to know what I truly remember after that because he has been in the news so much.

His death marked the beginning of a sad time in American history, when it seemed as if we lost our tolerance for discourse on political and philosophical differences, as JFK was followed in death by Martin Luther King, Jr., and then Bobby Kennedy. These days it's tough to get close to a sitting president, or any world leader for that matter, as extremists choose to make their statements by pointing a gun, or by bombing innocent people. The world feels like an increasingly dangerous place.

Statistics say that's not actually true, that we are safer today than we've ever been historically speaking. After all, half of the population of Europe was wiped out in a single battle with plague in the Middle Ages and two world wars wreaked their devastation in the modern era. Plus, people have always had the capacity for cruelty.

So, we're safer perhaps. But judging by what one reads on the internet and soundbites on the news, it seems we are becoming angrier day by day, and ruder, and less tolerant of opposing views.

Perhaps if we listened more and talked less. Too simplistic? Likely yes, but don't we have to start somewhere?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBiH5fsKJB8