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The unexpected death was the hardest. When my grandfather died it felt like the universe had lost something big. He taught me to love the forest and the importance of taking care of it. He was a tall physically strong man, a retired army officer. He and my grandmother used to hop onto military transport planes (many years ago) and…
My father, a retired attorney, was succumbing to his Parkinson’s related dementia, and was pretty much confined to bed in a nursing home. Grim, beige, in a town about 6 hours from my home. My mother had died about 13 months before, after 60 years of marriage. My brother lived in his town, and knew and trusted the management of…
When I was doing my CPE, I was on call one summer evening at a hospital in the Midwest. Early in the morning, I was awakened by a page to come baptize a baby who had been born too early and had died at birth. Her parents wanted her baptized, so she’d have a name. I went up to their…
Rose (not her real name) was over 80, quite ill, and nearing the end of her life. Her body was frail, her voice weak, but she seemed to have so much to say. As I stood by her hospital bed, she told me her mother and aunt were in the hallway. (They both died over 20 years prior.) I…