​Today is my fairy god-mother’s birthday. She is who I thank most for who I am becoming. Tiana, as she liked to be called, was a force and she knew it. She was devoted to that which she liked and emphatic about those things she did not like- to include square plates and football. 
When Tiana was diagnosed with ovarian cancer she wasn’t surprised nor particularly upset. She wanted to be full and fierce or nothing. Her diagnosis returned her the control she had lost over her life as her children had grown, left home, and she and her husband divorced.  

She engaged the best doctors, care providers, and advisors, and when it became apparent that hers was not a fight to be won, she pressed me into service for what I now practice as a Death Doula. 
We sorted her affairs, her home, and her many possessions. We reviewed her life, reflected on her ‘who’, her values, and her legacy. She knew what she wanted her people to remember about her and she knew how she wanted to live on in their lives. She wrote letters, made phone calls, and distributed inheritances with her warm hand. She made meaning of her life and enriched the lives of those she loved. She gave me a gold bangle that, when I snapped it on my wrist, locked. It’s been there almost 8 years. She was pleased then and I believe she keeps it there still.  

She determined every aspect of her passing away and created an action timeline for her demise. She survived her chaos because she accepted it, made her self strong, her space safe, and so lived until she died. 

She returned her star dust to the universe in September 2012.  

I clipped “Something Else” by Rick Moranis from the New York Times on Sunday, May 16, 2010 and taped it to my office wall. I am as amused by the capital letter force of author Rick Moranis’ voice today as I was then. As whopping as 2020 has been to date, I remember when 2010 opened with big and scary times: the earthquake that destroyed Haiti; BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that was the most devastating environmental disaster in history; Apple debuted the iPad and Google introduced the driverless car; Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted and grounded air travel; Greece’s economy tanked and masses rioted protesting austerity sanctions and bailout; Tea Party politics raged; and Dawn Brancheau was killed at Sea World.

The recent radical shifts in our world call on the brave to keep “a selective memory for remembering the good things, a logical prudence to avoid doing anything to ruin the present, and defiant optimism for facing the future.”~Isabel Allende, The Sum of Our Days.

Everything that lives dies 
Dying is the hardest thing we do 
Everything that breathes eats 
Dying is the hardest thing we do 
Everything that teaches grows 
Dying is the hardest thing we do 
Everything that loves spreads 
Dying is the hardest thing we do
Everything that wakes sleeps 
Dying is the hardest thing we do 
Everything that endures forgives 
Dying is the hardest thing we do. 

And when we die, the hardest thing our people do is not fear. 
And when we die, the hardest thing our people do is to grieve.
And when we die, the hardest thing our people do is to live. 

​Grief is an act of humanity. 

This curious tale of a creature who “went out one day when the grass was green and the sky was grey” was known not by beast nor bird nor fish nor insect and became celebrated by all when none could name him. Accepting him ‘in gratitude, with trust and allowing’ (Karen Newell, Sacred Acoustics) acknowledges that which is in one is in us all.

This is a time of transformational predicaments. We are in a collective experience that is intimately isolating. This time is only personal if we think it’s not in us. This time is only relational if we think it’s not in us. This time is only spiritual when we know it’s in us. Ernest Hemingway prophetically wrote “we are all broken...that’s how the light gets in.” (A Farewell to Arms).
 
An apocalypse is not a reckoning nor is it the end of the world. Literally, an apocalypse reveals: uncovering or unveiling the truth that was there all along but that we did not see before. I still see and will never forget September, 11, 2001. Our life and my liberties were threatened then and are now again and our well being is in jeopardy. I remember heroes - too many to count - rising to the occasion for the simple call to action “Let’s Roll!”.

So much of this life will always be beyond our understanding - “as obscure as the landscapes of someone else’s dreams” ~Karen Thompson Walker, The Dreamers. When I coach that the only way out of a predicament is through, we work toward transformation by learning, acknowledging, practicing and praying that ‘happiness is a choice...self esteem is a skill.’

I think it is wickedly hard not to take this time personally: to give without remembering and to receive without forgetting. So I mean to “fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run.” ~Rudyard Kipling, If.

I will start by counting my blessings and naming them. Naming might begin first thing...yesterday was, today is here and tomorrow will come. Naming is my way to witness as Amor Towles explained: “so that she can be addressed. So that she can be invited to tea; called to from across the room; discussed in conversation when she is absent; and included in your prayer.” (A Gentleman in Moscow).

We can and must transform our predicaments and so evolve to be ever more different and ever more the same and start to connect there. At the end of life all that ever really matters is this:

​Wishing glory to our United States on this Independence Day and peace to all souls.