Film Friday Two weeks ago our Friday night film group watched Yojiro Takita’s Departures, the Japanese film that won the 2008 Best Foreign Film Oscar. Given our society’s discomfort with death, it is a film that people must see. (Caution: In the following reflection I’ll be revealing the ending.) Departures is about a young Japanese […]
Tag Archives: death and dying
Befriending, Not Fighting, Grendel’s Mother
I am still vibrating from the powerful student essays I received last week. I talked about one yesterday and will share another today. This is one from a student whose mother is dying of brain cancer. Erica Rutkai (she is letting me use her name) decided to move from California to the east coast when […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Beowulf, cancer, Erica Rutkai, Grendel's mother, Hero | Comments closed
Children Commence, Parents Let Go
Flowers for Justin This past Saturday St. Mary’s College held its graduation and, as always, it was a time of good-byes. Good-byes are the theme of today’s post. One good-bye was to poet Lucille Clifton, a former member of the faculty whose poem “blessing the boats (at St. Mary’s)” has become a regular part of […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "blessing the boats", "lesson of the falling leaves", Education, Lucille Clifton | Comments closed
Dazzled by Dreams of the Body
Ten years ago my 21-year-old son died on the Sunday following Easter. The coupling of the tragedy with the celebration of Christ’s resurrection makes my questioning of the religious observance all the more acute. Do I really believe that Jesus rose from the dead? Is there life after the death of our bodies? Or if […]
Dancing to a Bright Star
Film Friday As this is Friday, I begin with a discussion of a film. But as it is also the tenth anniversary of the drowning death of my 21-year-old son Justin, I plan to digress. I trust you will allow me to embark on a bit of a ramble. The film I have chosen is […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Bright Star", "Ode to the West Wind", Adonais, death of a child, Jane Campion, John Keats, Percy Shelley | Comments closed
The Choice: To Die or to Go on Caring
Yesterday we buried a long-time friend, 98-year-old Maurine Holbert Hogaboom, a New York actress who had retired to southern Maryland. Tomorrow we commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of my oldest son Justin. April, a month of new beginnings, has too often proved cruel as well. Nature often works ironically. Justin, feeling joyous on a […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Castaway", "John Chapman", Herman Melville, Lost Children, Mary Oliver, Moby Dick, William Cowper | Comments closed
Satirizing Doctors, the Best Medicine
Doctors debate while patient dies in Hogarth’s “Harlot’s Progress,” plate V I’ve talked several times about my friend Alan, who has been battling cancer for a while now. At present he is still alive, still working out at the gym, and still in the dark about what kind of cancer he has. He longs for […]
Poetic Lifelines for Those Left Behind
Lucille, daughters, and granddaughter On Saturday night St. Mary’s College held a memorial service for Lucille Clifton, the noted American poet who was also our teacher, colleague and friend for almost twenty years. For me, the most moving part of the ceremony was hearing Lucille’s remaining three daughters reading their favorite poems. Or rather, they chose […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "february 13, "homage to my hips", "i was born with 12 fingers", 1980", Lucille Clifton, Mothers and Daughters | Comments closed
On Cherry Trees and Time Passing
The ornamental cherry trees on St. Mary’s College campus are in full bloom at the moment. Few moments of the spring are more beautiful. I remember the shock a number of years ago when a beaver moved into the area and took them all down. The animal was deported, new trees were planted, and now […]
