I’m a sucker for Mr. Rogers — always have been and always will be. In honor of his birthday this month (3/20/28), I wanted to share a few of the many ways he spoke to our highest aspirations as parents and as human beings. 1. Fred Rogers cut us some slack, acknowledging how hard parenting […]
A couple of years ago I blogged regularly about my Year to Live project. The 365 day experiment profoundly changed the way I think about life, even to this day. Every once in a while, something fantastic and year-to-live-y grabs my attention and makes me want to jump up and share it with you.
We all have some form of magical thinking when it comes to dying. It’s how we attempt to gain control over our fears. My particular brand of magical thinking is that if you eat well, exercise and meditate, you will most likely have a long and healthy life. I know this is not entirely rational…
This month marks a year since my one year to live project came to an end. And a year since my close childhood friend Marisa died of metastatic breast cancer…. I have some good news to share. I’ve just come back from Marisa’s brother & sister-in-law’s baby shower. Marisa would have been an amazing aunt to this little one, and I like to imagine her smiling at all of us.
What I did not write about was the all-too-real end-of-life journey of my earliest childhood friend Marisa, who was courageously facing metastatic cancer while I went about my hypothetical journey.
Unbelievably, I’ve arrived at the end of the Year to Live project. I’ve learned from others that the “dissolution of the body” meditation which symbolically closes the class is a powerful one. Frankly, I’m scared of it. One person I know who experienced it said that this exercise is so visceral that he actually lost control of some, ah, bodily function when he did it.
I longed to be grounded once again in the reality of my everyday life. The familiar messiness. These very piles of paper. My work. The cacophony of street noises on my New York block. The personalities that drive me to distraction.
I wanted to ask if she might like to have lunch someday. I felt nervous and 17 again. Thankfully she beat me to it. That’s how I came to be seated in the dining room of her orderly, yet cheerful, northern NJ condo.