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.
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.
For the past 85 years, my family has been handing down the skeletal remains of someone we call Felix. While this may sound sinister or downright peculiar, let me assure you that Felix holds a cherished position in our family. He’s a silent but reliable teacher and a master at imparting lessons of impermanence…
Amma, otherwise known as the “Hugging Saint,” is an Indian woman — a divine spirit by some accounts — who is said to have the power to transmit a spark of unconditional love and compassion through her embrace. People came from all around the country to stand in line to see her; surely I could travel 40 blocks.
I picked up a canvas with Banksy’s beat up Buddha and wondered what the kids would make of it. So I plunked down 25 pounds and bought it. The first thing I did when I got home was pound a nail into the empty wall…
When a person dies, there are many things that can be said, and there is at least one thing that should never be said. The night after Alex died I was sitting in the living room of my sister’s house outside of Boston, when the front door opened and in came a nice-looking, middle-aged woman. When she saw me, she shook her head, then headed for the kitchen, saying sadly over her shoulder, “I just don’t understand the will of God.”
In the 1940s, Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell — who was credited with founding the Scout Movement — wrote a letter found in his desk drawer after his death. Within it was his now-famous advice to Scouts around the globe: “Try and leave this world a little better than you found it.”
When the volunteer coordinator called me, she said she had a woman who was “too mean to die” and that she trusted that I was the right person for her. With that introduction, I left with an open heart and open mind, intending not to judge, but send loving energy to her. She was the most miserable, unlikable, complaining, woman I have met!