Category: Death and dying

I’m a night owl. In summer, I rarely see the sun rise. At Winter Solstice in the Pacific Northwest, it’s easy, even for me. Yesterday morning, just after eight, I sat looking east out of our living room windows. Four floor-to-ceiling panels of ten small panes each, with the original glass from when the house …

Forty-one years ago this past June, my mother died of metastatic breast cancer two days before her 67th birthday. She died between the births of our two sons; our older son was two and a half years old, and our younger son was conceived eight months later. As my mother was dying, I was acutely …

At Samhain, celebrated the eve of October 31 through November 1, the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the spirits becomes more permeable. Our Halloween traditions come from ancient Celtic pagan practices to honor and feed the dead, listen to their advice, and scare away evil spirits. Many pagans believe …

In pagan traditions, Samhain is the New Year, the time when the old year dies away. We move into a period of darkness and rest before spring’s rebirth. Death is all around us. Leaves, first brilliant red, orange, and yellow, lie brown and rotting on the ground. Stalks of summer’s yellow sunchokes turn black, signaling …

It’s spring in the Pacific Northwest, a time when plants that pushed leaves through near-frozen winter ground begin their promiscuous blooming. Next to the hardy hellebores, narcissus and daffodils show off their yellow bonnets. Slender willow branches, brown in winter, turn spring-green as their leaves sprout. At Lake Quinault, where we spent a few days …

My grandparents Florence and John Taylor. Florence died in the flu pandemic of 1918-1919. What is the coronavirus epidemic calling us to? Ironically, this disease that separates and isolates us from each other as we try to prevent its spread also calls us into deeper levels of connection. Connection with community, with ancestors, and with …

The cusp of death can conjure joy as well as pain, gratitude as well as grief, connection as well as separation – if we are open to it. At Samhain, celebrated on Oct. 31-Nov. 1, the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is thin. We remember and commune …

   Now that the temperature outside is rising, it’s no longer snowing, and I can spend a few hours out in the garden, I take stock of how the plants are doing. Which ones died, which ones barely survived weeks of below-freezing temperatures in February and a sudden March snowstorm, which ones thrived. Two chard …

Image © Texas Public Radio A couple of days ago, I asked for dream guidance and received two dreams about crossing borders. I am with a group of people who are trying to cross the border. We approach it in different ways, each with its own risks. We come with most of our belongings in …

In a time of grieving, I received a dream image that I thought was a harbinger of death. To my great joy and relief, I discovered it was something else entirely. Our sister-in-law, Victoria, died of lymphoma last fall. She was 57 years old, and this isn’t the way anyone expected it to go. At …