“Troubled Water,” a 2008 Norwegian film about a horrendous crime, brings out the depth and humanity of everyone involved.
Tag Archives: death and dying
A Child’s Murder, a Humane Vision
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Bridge over Troubled Water, death of a child, Erik Poppe | Comments closed
Twilight, Evening Bell, After That the Dark
I share Tennyson’s wonderful poem “Crossing the Bar” in memory of an old Navy friend who died this past week.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Crossing the Bar", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Julia Bates | Comments closed
Hitchens: A Life Lived in Literature
Even in his final days, Christopher Hitchens was having active discussions about novels, poems and plays. He understood how much was at stake in literature.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Whitsun Weddings", Christopher Hitchens, death, Ian McKewin, Philip Larkin | Comments closed
The Black Dragon Scales of Grief
Nobel laureate Thomas Tranströmer’s poem “After a Death” accurately captures how it feels to lose someone you love.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "After a Death", Beowulf, Thomas Tranströmer | Comments closed
A Philosophy Teacher’s Last Lecture
In the memorial service held in honor of my philosophy colleague Alan Paskow, we listened to some observations Alan recorded about his favorite poem, Dylan Thomas’ “Fern Hill.” I share them with you here. Alan recorded them for his funeral service and I think I understand why.
Final Instructions from a Dying Teacher
Last Thursday we had our memorial service for my friend Alan Paskow, the philosophy colleague whom I have written about several times. In my own remarks I invoked Plato’s Crito. I said that, for the three-plus years that Alan lived with the diagnosis of a terminal illness, he was like Socrates after having drunk the hemlock He knew that he was dying but he used his illness as an opportunity to explore with others what it meant. Like Socrates, he was a teacher to the end.
Telling a Dog to Stay
Since I know that some of you are dog lovers and have had the experience, as I did three years ago, of “putting your pet down,” I offer you this poem by Daniel Groves” called “A Dog’s Life.” It is sad and playful both and may bring a smile amidst the tears.
Dry Tears & Raise Your Heads as Flowers
In “The Beauty of Death,” Kahlil Gibran orders his friends not to mourn him when he dies but to celebrate instead. “Let me rest, for my soul has had its bounty of days and nights,” he says. When Alan learned that he only had a limited number of months to live–months that he managed to stretch to four years–he made sure that he reaped each day’s bounty. He spent a lot of his time intoxicated with the beauty of it all.
I Weep for Adonais–He Is Dead
When W. B. Yeat died on January 28, 1939, a despondent W. H. Auden wrote, “The day of his death was a dark cold day,” an instance of how we look to the weather for confirmation of our distress. The idea of a dying friend slipping away without leaving a trace is an unsettling one. Much better if the weather functions as a second witness, which it seems to do if it metaphorically expresses how we feel. When my good friend Alan Paskow died on Tuesday, I latched on to the fact that the day began with a tornado alert and that we were lashed by slashing rain for much of the morning.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Adonais, elegy, Lost Children, Mary Oliver, Percy Shelley | Comments closed
