Tuesday Movie: Dead Man Walking

Since yesterday's post was a mother's experience with her son's execution, I have decided to recommend "Dead Man Walking" for my Tuesday movie.  This movie is based on the book by Sister Helen Prejean.  Ironically, I received an email from Sister Helen this past week. I asked if she would write a blurb for my book.  She responded that she'd like to read some pages and that's what she's doing right now.  Well, I don't know exactly if she's doing that, but I'd like to imagine that she is.  Hey, a woman can dream can't she?

I am on the road this week.  It's been sort of a stressful week.  My dad was on a cruise and he had to be taken to the emergency room due to heart issues.  I had a trip planned to see my mom and attend a cousin's wedding.  My aunt is not doing too well either, so mortality has been on my mind a lot.  If I have any advice to offer it is this...Drink lots of water, laugh a lot, and get your advance directive done.  And don't sweat the small stuff.

Speaking of small stuff, I got another rejection from an agent.  It was a very nice rejection, but it is still rejection.  I think I'm going to self publish "Death Becomes Us."  I'm not getting any younger and either are my parents.  I'd like to put something tangible in their hands and move on to other projects. I know how to market and now all I'll need is a very smart editor to work with.  I'm looking for someone who is both brilliant and cheap.  If you know anyone, please let me know.

So, I won't be posting anything tomorrow.  I'm going to enjoy hanging out with my mom and her sister.  I'm going to watch movies, eat a lot of ice cream and not worry that my jeans are getting a little tighter.  I'm thankful for this body I've been given.  It's strong and for now, it gets me where I need to go.

Thanks to all of you for reading this blog and commenting.  It means the world to me to feel that I'm making just a little bit of difference in people's lives.

Monday Mournings: When Your Son is Executed. A Mother's Story

My name is Mary Puckett, I am 56 years old and I am the mother of 4 boys.  I live in Vicksburg, MS, where I was born and raised.  My husband and I lived in Texas for a time when our boys were small. My youngest son was born in Houston.  In 1986, we moved back to Mississippi.  Soon after moving back, I obtained my GED as I had dropped out of high school years before. In 1994, at age 38, I enrolled in Computer Programming at a local community college.  At that time, my son Matt was a senior in high school and my son Trey was a junior.  I wanted to do really good in this program because I wanted my boys to be proud of me.  

In October of 1995, the year that Matt graduated and as he was preparing to leave for a stint in the Navy, he was arrested and charged with capital murder.  In August of 1996, Matt was tried and convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection. He was 19 years old and innocent.   I don’t plan to go into the details of the crime and the trial on this blog right now because it would take forever and this blog is about death.  Matt’s death.

Working with Death Wednesday: Hospice

Piper Bayard is a recovering attorney with a college degree or two. She’s also a belly dancer from waaaay back, and she currently pens post-apocalyptic sci-fi and spy novels when she isn’t shooting, SCUBA diving, blogging, baking cookies, or chauffeuring her children to their teenaged immediacies.

DW:  Why did you want to become a hospice volunteer?
PB: When my mother was dying, my husband, young children and I were her only present family. She was in a nice nursing home, and I visited her every day, but she was often frightened and confused when I wasn’t there. I frequently wished for someone to sit with her when I couldn’t. A couple of years after she crossed over, I felt strong enough to volunteer with Hospice for the express purpose of being there for people the way I wished someone had been there for my mother and me.

DW: What was the training like?
PB: The training was thought-provoking and reassuring. I worried that I wouldn’t know what to say or do with strangers. The teachers really helped us with that, practicing both common scenarios and the more bizarre exchanges that could come up.

Tuesday Movie: Ordinary People

Ordinary People came out in 1980 and was Robert Redford's directorial debut.  I didn't see it in the theater, but years later as an adult.  I always thought of Mary Tyler Moore as the cute and spunky characters she played on TV from the Dick Van Dyke show to the Mary Tyler Moore show.  After seeing her in this film, I never saw her in the same light. She showed she had some serious acting chops, but she didn't win the Oscar for her performance.  The fact that Donald Sutherland was not nominated for his performance was considered one of the biggest acting snubs in Academy history. It's a great film about the dynamics of a family.  Yes, it's sad, but damn it's good. Another reason I like this film is that an X rated version of it was mentioned in one of my all time favorite movies, The Fisher King.

Monday Mournings: The Death of a Spouse

Donna lives and travels full-time in a 41' 5th wheel toy hauler pulled by a small Freightliner truck. A retired IT professional she also rides her own Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Her most recent passion is writing. You can find her at http://2takinga5th.com as well as http://donnamcnicol.com

DW: Who was the person that died?

DM: It was my husband of 19 years. 

DW: How old were you at the time? 

DM: I had just turned 58. 

DW:  How old was your husband? 

DM: He had just turned 62. 

DW:  Was it a sudden death or did you know it was going to happen? 

DM: He had been diagnosed with head/neck cancer in 2001. He stayed in remission just over two years so when it came back, he was terminal. He had almost another year. I'm not sure if knowing it's going to happen is an advantage or not other than being more financially prepared. 

DW: Did you and your husband talk about death? 

DM: Not to a great extent. I think he always thought he would beat it. I tend to be more of a realist and knew the odds. I tried my best to prepare myself. 

DW:  Had you experienced any other deaths in your personal life before this person died? 

DM: I had lost all four grandparents, a couple of uncles and both parents. Some were unexpected and at a younger age, the others more late in life deaths. 

DW: Were people supportive of your grief or did they shy away when you were grieving? 

DM: People were extremely supportive of me. If anyone shied away, it was me. We had moved from Florida to a small town in Tennessee less than two months before he died. He wanted to see me settled in a comfortable spot. That was the good part. The bad part was I knew one neighbor (barely) and my realtor. Oh, and the Harley-Davidson dealer in the neighboring town where I had bought my new bike the month before. I slowly got to know people by forcing myself out of the house even if it was to sit at McDonald's to drink coffee and read for a couple of hours. 

DW: Is there anything you wish you'd done differently? 

DM: I wish he hadn't worked right up until the end but I also know that working helped him through his days.  

DW: Was he buried or cremated? 

DM: He was cremated and most of his ashes where spread in the mountains of Tennessee. In addition, we bought small glass bottles and the funeral home put some of his ashes in each. Each of our kids (we were a blended family) and some close friends and other family, got the bottle with the Dr. Seuss/Theodor Geisel saying, "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." on it. They then chose to celebrate his life in their own way. His ashes were spread at Daytona Bike Week, Pikes Peak in Colorado, down by the river he played at as a child in Rochester NY and other favored spots. I also carry a small vial on my key ring with some of his ashes so he is always with me. My bottle of his ashes will be mixed in with mine when I pass. 

DW:  Did you learn anything about the grieving process that you'd like to share? 

DM: The biggest thing that surprised me was the ebb and flow. For the first two years it's a roller coaster. You'll be doing fine and a song or a phrase or a TV show/movie will bring back a memory. I learned to let myself wallow for a bit, then head back out and face the world as best as I could. 

DW: Were any songs played at the memorial that were important to your husband? 

DM:  He had no memorial service, thus the bottles of ashes, but some good songs would be: "Shameless" Garth Brooks (his favorite and it still makes me cry) "Live Like You Were Dying" Tim McGraw (I could listen to either of these the first year) "Colour My World" Chicago (sort of our song - see http://www.write4ten.com/2012/06/prompt-song-memory.html)

The Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference

     Since Friday, I've been immersed in the world of nonfiction writing in Grapevine, Texas at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. And this is a mighty good thing. It's not that I think that nonfiction is better than fiction (the same rules of good storytelling apply to both) it's just that I find it fascinating to be around hundreds of people who love to use what's already there to create a story. As one speaker said and I can't ethically quote her according to Roy Peter Clark's talk about truth (I didn't write it down or record it) but it said basically that it would be much easier to write fiction.  Honestly, I can't write fiction.  I've tried, but I think if we dig deep enough, we can find sparkly vampires or Hannibal Lecter in our own back yard or maybe even in our family tree.

     My attendance at the conference was made possible by the wonderful DFW Writer's Workshop in Euless.  Most of my fellow comrades at DFWW write fiction.  Being around them on a weekly basis and listening to their tales of ghosts and magic and dystopian worlds has made me a better writer.  I am eternally grateful for their feedback and their encouragement.

     Okay, enough mushiness, let's go back to the conference...So, I entered an essay into the Mayborn writing competition. The particular essay that I entered was on the verge of being banished to the bowels of my pc after several rejections and close calls at publication.  I thought I'd give it one last chance and enter it into the Mayborn.  If anything, it might get me selected to be a workshop participant.  And it was.

     The ten people in my workshop group were awesome.  They were generous and thoughtful with their critiques and they made me realize what was missing from this story.  Me.  Well, a bit of my history that I had never considered as necessary.  But now that they've pointed it out, I had a Eureka moment.  That's IT!!!  I had the secret ingredient of the secret ingredient soup.

     So, it was a great surprise on Saturday night that I was selected as one of the winners.  Okay, I was a "Runner Up."  I didn't receive one of the cash prizes, but my story will be published in next year's Ten Spurs. By next year, I plan to pay my own way to the conference.  I will either have a book deal in place or I will seriously pursue my dream of teaching writing in a correctional setting.  You may think that is a silly dream, but I've learned that the greatest thing we can do with these 80 odd years we think we've been given is to give other people hope.

     Hope.  I got a heaping helping of it this weekend.  Thanks to everyone who made it possible.  I will pay it forward.

     Peace out.

Write Club

    Write Club

Not to be confused with...

There will be no pummeling.

Just a head to head writing competition. (500 words of your best, kick ass work)

In the end, there's some agents and editors to crown the victor.

Click that link up there to sign up.  

Death in Gaming

Wes Copeland is the father of two, husband of one. Gamer, writer, retired pro-wrestler. Resident of the UK.

You can check his stuff out at  www.VideoGamesInteractive.com & www.Newbsround.com


Death is a natural part of life. It's something that everyone, at some point, comes into contact with. Yet our understanding, and relationship with death is still very much a taboo subject. Myriads of people see death on a daily basis. It's in our lives, it's on our TVs, our cinemas. Even walking down the street is sure to end in a case of mass-insect-homicide.

Video games on the whole are given a bad reputation when it comes to how death is portrayed. The media is always looking to condemn gaming as an evil pastime that Satan himself created as a means to morally corrupt the youth of today.

Admittedly, death in video games is somewhat of a quagmire. Gaming, as a platform to tell a story, can generate some beautifully realistic relationships, resulting in some truly harrowing deaths that generate real emotion.

Tuesday Movie: A Single Man

A Single Man came out in 2009.  I just saw it last week, alone without popcorn or any sort of candy, which is maybe why I feel so on the fence about this film.  This is a movie you need to see with someone and then discuss it.  My husband fell asleep about twenty minutes in. So, this film is Tom Ford's directorial debut.  Tom Ford is a clothing designer and he has made a very artistic film.  I may even go so far as to say it's artsy fartsy.  In my opinion, it tries just a tad too much to be art instead of just telling the story of George, a gay man in the 60's whose partner of 16 years was killed in a car accident. This film is the day in the life of George, a British college professor who is contemplating suicide. What I found particularly sad is that George wasn't invited to his partner's funeral.  I can't imagine this and I wanted him to fight for that, but that's not what this movie was about. Colin Firth plays George and he is terrific in the film, but everyone else just seemed like set dressing. Okay, Julianne Moore was good too, but she's good in everything.  She's like the poor man's Meryl Streep.  I'm lying.  I just said that because it sounded funny.  She was miscast in the Jurassic Park film that my son is enamored with.

This film is book-ended by death, although it's not graphic.  It's stylized death.

Have you seen it?  What did you think?

Monday Mournings: The Death of a Brother

My name is Jim Wright, but most people just call me... erm... Jim. I'm a native of northeast Alabama, Navy veteran and retired from a large Pathology laboratory in Birmingham, Alabama. I now live in Amman, Jordan with my Companion, Zeek and our psychotic cat, Umm Khalil. These days I spend most of my time writing, blogging, and Tweeting and just self-published my first book, New Yesterdays at Create Space.
I spent about twenty or so years, on and off, in the funeral industry. Those years were some of the most rewarding of my life and certainly helped to make me the man I am today. (You can read my interviews with Jim here and here.)

DW: Who was the person that died?
JW: My younger brother, Tony.

DW: How old were you at the time?
JW: I was 17 years old.

DW: How old was Tony?
JW: 16.

DW: Was it a sudden death or did you know it was going to happen?

JW: It was "suddenly expected." He came down with cold and flu symptoms about three weeks before he died. His condition progressed fairly rapidly from "nothing to be concerned about" to a comatose state. We were advised not to hope for recovery about a week before he died. We finally disconnected the life support systems and allowed him to die, still without a firm diagnosis. The autopsy revealed that he had died of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. It was the first recorded case of that condition east of the Mississippi River. RMSF attacks the body universally which led the doctors on a merry chase after pneumonia, renal failure, respiratory failure and so many others. They even debated whether Tony had contracted some kind of viral encephalitis or meningitis.

DW: Did you and Tony ever talk about their death?
JW: Death wasn't a subject of conversation with teenage boys in those days.

DW: Had you experienced any other deaths in your personal life before your brother died?
JW: Yes. My sister died from SIDS when I was about 4 and my maternal Grandmother and an uncle when I was ten.

DW: Were people supportive of your grief or did they shy away when you were grieving?
JW: Quite supportive actually. I come from a very large and, in those days, close-knit family. From the time Tony's condition became serious we were never left alone. My Father's sisters and brothers, as well as my cousins were all there on a daily and nightly basis offering support, kind words and just being there. After the funeral, they didn't desert us. I'd have to say that my extended family helped me to get through that very difficult grieving process in a way that no professional counselor could ever have done.



DW: Is there anything you wish you'd done differently with this person?
JW: I don't think so. I only regret we didn't have more time together. We were fourteen months apart in age and naturally very close. I added him as a character in my recently published book. The months I spent writing that story, I felt he was right there beside me helping flesh out the story. After thirty-nine years, he is still with me and I think about him surprisingly often.

DW: Was he buried or cremated?
JW: He is buried out in the countryside, in our family cemetery, under a tall cedar tree.

DW: Did you learn anything about the grieving process that you'd like to share?
JW: I think I learned that having a support system in place is critical to the grieving process. That being said, I also think that grieving is a very private affair that you ultimately have to face alone, in the dark. All the support, kind words, and warm gestures are necessary to get through the initial stages but finally it has to be faced and accepted alone.

DW: Were any songs played at the memorial that were important to your brother?
JW: I have to honestly say that I can't remember what music was played. The thing I remember most is my Dad saying that he didn't want a "traditional" funeral. He explained that, in his opinion, funerals were torture, in those days, with a person or group getting up and singing a song about joyous, heavenly reunions and then a preacher getting up and wringing the tears out of the family and friends. Back then, funerals in my area of the South had a minimum of three preachers who usually took the opportunity to give a modified revival-type sermon warning that the deceased had barely scraped by and managed to miss Hell, but a lot of us might not be so lucky. Gawd, how I hated those funerals! So, Dad selected a couple of hymns and one preacher who was a good friend of his. He promised to limit his remarks to no more than 15 minutes, and he kept that promise.

Sorry for that tangent. Back to the question at hand, Elton John had just come out with his Yellow Brick Road album. I can remember Tony and me both saying that "Funeral For a Friend" and "Candle in the Wind" would be perfect funeral music. But of course, we knew when we said it that we both would be living for many, many years before we had to think about such things...

This one goes out to Tony.

Special Guest Post by Tex Thompson

Today is Friday and I normally don't post anything on Friday, but when I did my "call for help" post last week, this lady was kind enough to write something up and I loved it so much, I'm bending the rules and tweaking the format of my blog.  Tex is in my writer's group and she is not only a very talented writer, but she is also excellent at giving thoughtful/helpful critique.  Please go show her some blog love.  Seriously.

So, who is she?

Tex Thompson is a lifelong resident of Irving, the fetid and friendly armpit of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Born into an Addams family of overachievers, she struggles valiantly against success and independence by writing "rural fantasy" and waxing pedantic about the fiction-crafting arts. You can find her online at www.tex-books.com.

Like a lot of people, I was issued two grandfathers.

One, as he got up there in years, started having odd tremors. He went to the doctor, and returned with his wife to hear the results: Parkinson's. (Or as we've since renamed it, Michael J Fox Disease.) The doctor explained the progression of symptoms - increasing tremor/shakiness, loss of muscle coordination, all the rest. When he was finished, Grandma arched a salacious eyebrow at Grandpa and said, "Well, I guess we won't need to buy that vibrating bed after all." Even years later, when he was in a nursing home and hooked up to all manner of IVs and equipment, I can remember her threatening to put tequila in his feeding tube if he didn't behave. (He once got mightily sick on tequila during shore leave and never could stomach it afterwards.) His illness and death were every bit as hard as you'd expect, but that thread of humor ran throughout.

My other grandfather was just the opposite: an immensely hale and hearty fellow, he went to work every day until he was 88; renewed his pilot's license at 90. He was still in excellent health when his wife, who'd experienced serious physical and mental decline in the last few years, reached her end. All three children were there on the night she passed away. They asked if he'd like to stay over at my aunt's house; he said no thank you, and they arranged to come back the next morning to take him out to breakfast. They were on their way when my aunt got the call from the retirement community. "Don't go to the apartment," they said; "come to the front desk." As it turned out, after the kids had left the night before, my granddad had apparently written a couple of checks, shut the dog in the apartment, gone out to the patio and shot himself.

I came to find out afterwards that he'd once watched a friend deteriorate - cancer, I think, with a series of strokes near the end - and had decided that he wasn't going to risk that: he never wanted to reach a point where he was no longer in control of his life, or no longer had the ability to end it on his own terms. As soon as he was finished taking care of Grandma, he saw himself out after her.

It's hard to imagine two more different endings. If gallows humor often strikes us as sinful, suicide is far more so. But what I see on both sides of my family tree is an effort to take something as enormous and inevitable as death and control it somehow - to wrest back some of its power and say, "fine - but we're going to do this my way."

Sometimes, people who know me or read my blog tell me I'm funny. Usually I scuff my metaphorical toe in the dirt and say "aw, shucks." What I really mean to say is, "thanks so much for saying so; I'm practicing like the dickens for my final performance, and humor beats hell out of the alternative."

Working with Death Wednesday: EMT

Today I am so excited to be able to interview one of my friends.  She is not a blogger.  Her name is Katie and she's one of the few people who can crack me up.  We got into a lot of trouble together when we worked in an art department for the phone book.  I think we're both relieved that those days of "colorful use of yellow" are over.

She also hates to take pictures of herself so I had to dig this out of the archives.

Here's a day when we were not working but taking pictures in front of our new Macs.

Scary, huh?

DW:  So, why did you want to become an EMT, Miss Katie?

KS: I became an EMT because of my interest in the medical field. I figured it was the best way to get my feet wet. This was also around the time that you were riding with Upper Pine Fire, which sparked my interest as well.
(I knew I had a small part in this!!!)

DW:  What do you like about your work?
KS:  I like being able to comfort people during what can be a very scary time. It's also nice to have medical knowledge that can help during an emergency.

DW: What's the most difficult aspect of your job, besides the fact that I'm not there:)?
KS:  When I know the patient is beyond my help. The calls I dread the most are the ones involving children. I'm sure most medics would say that, though.

DW:  Tell me about your first experience about someone dying while you were working.
KS: It was last summer. We were called to a home where an elderly person had fallen off their front steps and hit their head. We all knew this patient wasn't going to make it, but we did everything in our power to get them to the hospital for definitive care. A passer-by was the one to call in the incident on a neighbors phone. I was the one to gather information from them so I could notify the patient's family.  It's an odd conversation to have. I imagine it was a hard day for the neighbors and passer-by as well, to witness someone's last moments.

DW:  Was that difficult?
KS:  It was difficult that day, as it was the first death I had witnessed. Well, it was the first time I knew someone was going to die. The patient died shortly after we reached the hospital.

DW:  Had you had personal experience with death prior to becoming an EMT?
KS: I've had quite a bit of experience with death prior to becoming an EMT; two close relatives, my grandmother and uncle, and my aunt's first born died of SIDS at the age of four months.

DW: What do you think are some misconceptions about the work you do?
KS:  I think the biggest misconception is that it's always fast-paced and life or death in this line of work.  It's not. While we do run plenty of emergent calls, there are many times that we get called out to help an elderly person off the floor or deal with a very intoxicated college student. There is little glamour in the pre-hospital setting.

DW:  Do you get to work with really hot guys?
KS:  Even if I did, it doesn't matter because they're all married.

DW:  What's the most unusual thing you've had to do?
KS:  I had a woman ask me to check and make sure her breast implants were still intact.

DW:  So did you go for second base?
KS:  No, I told her the ER would be more appropriate for that.

I love you Katie and I'm so proud that you are using your mad people skills for the greater good!  And thanks for helping me out today!

Tuesday Movie: Never Let Me Go

As you know, on Tuesdays I recommend a movie that has death in it.  You may ask yourself, now why on earth would I want to subject myself to watching a movie that's going to make me sad?  In my humble opinion, I think it's good to practice those sad or scary feelings with the help of Hollywood.  Like I tell my son when he gets scared by something he sees in a film, I say it's just a movie. And it is.

This past week, I went to see The Amazing Spiderman with my husband and kids.  I was really looking forward to seeing it because I love Spiderman.  Out of all the superheroes, he is my all time favorite and I hate spiders, but I like his story.  He's an orphan, he feels guilt for the death of his uncle, he's a geeky outsider, he feels he doesn't deserve love, he's moral, he doesn't have lots of money and he wants to help people.  Plus, he looks pretty good in his costume.

So, I sat through the newest installment of a very familiar origin story. I laughed, I got a bit weepy when Uncle Ben died, and I thrilled at the special effects.  But, and there's always a but, I was SERIOUSLY bummed out when I left the theater.  My husband and kids loved this movie more than the other ones made less than ten years ago.  For some reason, I felt bad for Tobey Maguire who is now too old to play the superhero.  So, instead of feeling awesome, I felt like I was perpetuating ageism.  Like Tobey, I'm also getting old.  And call me crazy, but I guess it scares me a little bit that no one feels just a wee bit sad that he was replaced by Andrew Garfield.

Not that there's anything wrong with Mr. Garfield. I think he is a terrific actor.  He stars in today's movie of the week, Never Let Me Go which came out in 2010.  It's based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro.  And I'm not going to spoil it for you by revealing the plot, but I will say that it's science fiction.  I really enjoyed it.

So, have you seen the Amazing Spiderman yet?  What are your thoughts? On Friday after I'd written this post, I saw this article about a study on why people like tearjerkers.

Monday Mournings: The Death of a Grandmother

My name is Elizabeth Twist. I write dark speculative fiction, mostly fantasy and horror, with some science fiction for good measure. I'm forty-one, and I live in Hamilton, Ontario, a former industrial centre that's doing its best to find itself.

DW: Who was the person that died?
ET: My maternal grandmother.

DW: How old were you at the time?
ET: I had just turned thirty-two. The call came the day after my birthday.

DW: How old was your grandmother?
ET: Ninety-six.

DW: Was it a sudden death or did you know it was going to happen?
ET:  Her death was sudden, although my grandmother seems to have known it would happen. On August 26th, she had been moved from her home to a care facility. She told someone, "You know, I'm only going to be in here for a month." She was right.

DW:  Did you and your grandmother talk about their death?
ET:  We didn't talk explicitly about her death, although I realized later that she'd been trying to talk about it a great deal. In the three years prior to her death, she reported seeing my grandfather, who had already passed sixteen years prior. At first he would appear in a doorway and hold his hand up to her as if forbidding her to approach. Later, he spoke with her, although she was shy about telling anyone the content of those conversations.

DW:  Had you experienced any other deaths in your personal life before your grandmother died?

ET:  In addition to my maternal grandfather, both of my paternal grandparents had passed. I also count the passing of the family dog as a significant death.

DW:  Were people supportive of your grief or did they shy away when you were grieving?
ET: My grandmother was the core of my extended family. Our gatherings happened at her house, and in many cases were celebrating her - Mother's Day and her birthday were a big deal, but we also got together at her place for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and other holidays. Her loss was devastating to everyone, and was especially hard on my mom, who had dedicated a lot of time and energy to making sure my grandmother was okay. I was more in a position of offering support than receiving it. I chose to keep my grief to myself for the most part. 

DW:  Is there anything you wish you'd done differently with this person?
ET: I wish I'd spent more time with her. I was in graduate school when she died, and it seemed like there was never enough time.

DW: Was she buried or cremated?

ET:  She was buried next to her husband.

DW:  Did you learn anything about the grieving process that you'd like to share?
ET:  Not to cast a shadow on what happened at the time at all - everyone was doing their best - but I think it's important, if you have to inform someone of the death of a significant person, to not leave that information in a voice mail message. Email would be even worse. I have never felt quite as lonely as I did when I had to listen to a recorded voice telling me that my grandmother had died. When you're getting that kind of news, you probably will want someone there with you, even if it's on the other end of a phone line. Those first few moments are the worst.
Each in their own way, my maternal grandparents both taught me that death is not the end. My grandfather visited me after he passed - my first paranormal experience. My grandmother, in her gentle insistence that he frequently returned to visit her in the time leading up to her death, strengthened my sense that those who leave their physical bodies are not gone. At the same time, when she died I really felt the vacuum she left behind. I won't call it faith, because it's not based in a religious tradition and it's experiential, so it's more like a knowing. My grandmother's death really brought into focus my sense that we come together with the families we have because those are the people we need to know in this lifetime, and there is nothing to fear in death, although it is a difficult transition for everyone involved. 

DW:  Were any songs played at the memorial that were important to your grandmother?
ET: I can't think of any, but Granny was a big soap opera follower. I remember watching this old opening to Days of Our Lives at her place. You could play that if you wanted to.

Writer Wednesday: David Dow

Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking with David Dow--writer, law professor, defender, spouse and father.  In other words, a well rounded individual.  We spoke about his work defending death row inmates, as well as his book Autobiography of an Execution that came out in 2010. We also talk about preparing for death. It's a really interesting interview if I say so myself.

Tuesday Movie: Harold and Maude

Harold and Maude came out in 1971.  At it's heart it is a love story, but there's also a lot of death.  Most of it is of the faked death variety, but some is not.  It's a classic. There's a lot of Cat Stevens music, which is cool.  (One of my favorite songs is "Morning has Broken.")

I tried to find the official trailer but I'm not really sure what that is. I kind of liked this one. Apparently, it has some scenes that aren't in the film.

So, tomorrow is the Fourth of July.  I've got an interview with David Dow who wrote Autobiography of an Execution, so be sure to stop by and take a listen.  Be safe!

Monday Mournings: The Death of a Spouse

Stacy S. Jensen is revising her memoir In a Blink: How Life Interrupts Death about the four-year period after her late husband’s catastrophic stroke left him mute and paralyzed. She worked as a newspaper editor and reporter for two decades. Today, she writes personal essays and children’s picture books.She remarried four years ago and a has a toddler. She blogs.

DW:  Who was the person that died?
SJ:  My husband Jimmy.

DW:  How old were you at the time?
SJ:  34

DW:  How old was Jimmy?
SJ:  37

DW: Was it a sudden death or did you know it was going to happen? He refused treatment, so we knew it was going to happen. He died two days shy of the fourth anniversary of his stroke.

DW: Did you and Jimmy talk about death?
SJ:  Yes. Jimmy had a catastrophic brain stem stroke when he was 33 as a result of a procedure to stabilize an aneurysm. The stroke left him mute and completely paralyzed. We communicated through an auditory scanning and blinking system. He lived in a nursing home. We were stalked by death after his stroke. A year before he died, I purchased burial plots at his request. When he decided to quit getting treatment (no
feeding tube or treatment for pneumonia), he detailed what he wanted for his funeral arrangements down to who would receive donations in lieu of flowers and which flag would drape his coffin. We also discussed what I would do after he died, as well.

DW:  Had you experienced any other deaths in your personal life before Jimmy died?
SJ:  Only grandparents.

DW:  Were people supportive of your grief or did they shy away when you were grieving?
SJ:  Most of the people around me were with me throughout the post-stroke years, so they knew what was going on with Jimmy and experienced it with me. It was difficult for some family members to be supportive when I decided to move out of state for a job a couple months later.

DW: Is there anything you wish you'd done differently with Jimmy?
SJ:  No.While the post-stroke years were difficult, they gave us an opportunity to say things and be prepared for death in a way that a sudden death does not. Early on during the post-stroke, I made a decision on how I would live.I never wanted to live with regret. Almost seven years after his death, I'm grateful I made that decision.

Since we had a lot of time between the stroke and his death, Jimmy made a lot of the decisions with me about how to sell his business and our house, as well as how we placed our seven dogs with family and friends. While these decisions were all difficult at the time, I was blessed to have him discuss options and solutions as we lived rather than dealing with them after his death.


DW: Was he buried or cremated?
SJ: Buried. I delayed the visitation by one day, so he was not buried on the four-year anniversary of his stroke.

DW: Did you learn anything about the grieving process that you'd like to share?
SJ:  For me, I grieved way before Jimmy ever died. Jimmy was a great person and husband, but I try not to make him into a saint. People often memorialize the dead so much, they aren't really the person you loved or
lived with when they were alive. Jimmy was a real person with flaws —before and after his stroke — and I remind myself of this. For example,years later when people say, "I'm sure he would have wanted you to do
this ..." I often laugh and say, "No, actually I don't think he would have." I don't want to make the person remarking uncomfortable, but a truthful response about what Jimmy would have wanted or not keeps it real for me.

DW: Were any songs played at the memorial that were important to Jimmy?
SJ: We played a video of photos at the funeral home which included Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd.

This one goes out to Jimmy