March 21, 2020 It occurred to me on my early morning walk today, that how most people present themselves is different than it was, say, a few months ago. And, how we are in the world matters. Let me explain. I went to the grocery store yesterday. Shelves were about 30% full, many empty, gaping, reminders of the fear-based rush we’ve seen in the past week. People in the store were wary, still generally respectful to each other, but not …
Tag: mortality
I think this may be a story of control submitting to grace. But first some background. For six years now, my synagogue, Beacon Hebrew Alliance in Beacon, NY, has built a sukkah in a public park on Main Street. Each year there’s a different theme, with programming reflecting that theme. This year, for a variety of reasons, the sukkah almost didn’t get built. But as Sukkot approached, the loss seemed too great, and we rallied to get it done, this …
My Uncle Harry died in March of 2002. I had gone to Kansas City to visit my parents and, hopefully, to help them move from an apartment into an assisted-living facility. Between the time I had made my travel plans and the time I arrived, my uncle had been hospitalized for what the emergency room doctor thought was a heart attack. In doing their morning check-in, the nurses at the assisted-living facility to which my uncle had moved in October …
[Ed. note: This is a reprint of a blog posting by one of our frequent contributors.— JB] Working for hospice is like following the progression of about forty different plays at once. What unexpected or surprising thing will one of my forty or so patients casually drop in her conversation with me today? What new realization will I come away with? What will I learn this week about the country the patient is from or what new Spanish expression will …