Paul Kalanithi was a young Stanford neurosurgeon who died March 9, 2015 from lung cancer.  Some of you may have read his New York Times essay “How Long Have I Got Left.” Possibly you have read his book Breath Becomes Air (which has close to 9,000 reviews on Amazon) which his wife Lucy published after his death. Or maybe you read Lucy’s NYT’s interview about how the book came about. All good stuff to look into when you have moment.

This week I am featuring Lucy’s response to receiving snail mail condolence notes and cards.  It is refreshing, sweet and to the point. And what a wonderful idea to have children participate.

How to Write a Condolence Note

From blog “Cup of Jo” By Joanna Goddard

This past spring (…) my brother-in-law Paul died of lung cancer. My sister, Lucy, was flooded with condolence cards and flowers. “I loved every single card,” she said, “Just getting a card felt so good.” Yet a few things stuck out as especially touching. We spoke on the phone this week, and she shared what she has learned…

Snail mail a card. Every email, phone call, everything was wonderful; I was astounded by how kind people were. Physical cards were especially nice to hold onto. I didn’t care at all what the card looked like. I have them in a basket in our living room and see them every day.

Describe how you can help. I was so grateful when people said, “Let us know if there’s anything we can do.” But when people offered specifics, it felt even easier for me to take them up on their offers. One friend wrote, “If you ever want to come over, we can grill and make grapefruit mojitos; we’d love to see you and there’s nothing we wouldn’t do for you.”

I have always related to Garrison Keilor’s humor. My background in rural Ohio was similar to Keilor’s. While the 1950’s didn’t seem to be particularly humorous at the time, they do in retrospect. 

Quaint. Endearing. And funny. 

The Depression still informed my family’s attitude. And the underlying message was always “things could be worse” no matter how bad they seem in the moment. 

Why not take this thought forward into your Thanksgiving Day? Instead of falling down the rabbit hole of some family dynamic, remember things could be worse. Someone ran a stop sign a mile away from your home today. They hit an unsuspecting driver entering the intersection. They didn’t hit you. 

Happy Thanksgiving!
Vicki

Lighten up, people, it’s Thanksgiving for God’s sake

It worries me that I’m using GPS to guide me around Minneapolis, a city I’ve known since I was a boy on a bicycle, and also that I text my wife from the next room, and when I get up in the morning Siri sometimes asks me, “What’s the matter? You seem a little down. Would you like to hear the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3?” And I say, Leave me alone, I just want to think, and she and I wind up having a conversation about delayed gratification.

I recently became aware of eating lunch totally detached from what I was putting into my mouth. This was happening every day! If you landed in my brain and asked it what I was eating, it couldn’t tell you!

I don’t remember not knowing what I am eating.

Sometimes, as I swallowed, I noticed I was holding my breath.

(Cutting to the chase quickly, this is not a post where I ultimately suggest you chew each bite of food a hundred times before swallowing.)

To stop my devolving experience, I started to eat lunch outside in the sun. There is something about the sun that is so valuable that it stops what isn’t—in its tracks.

So nothing to read, no draft of the next post to edit, no YouTube video of an art technique I am pursuing.

Nothing.

Nothing, but me, my food, and my mind. Me and my mind being separate, of course. We all think this way, don’t we?  We put food into our vehicle so it can chauffer our mind.

Considering how off-base I have become, it was fitting that I slowed down long enough to read Shane Parrish’s article on the “cult of speed.” He nails it when he says, “when everyone goes fast, most advantages brought by speed get lost.”

I know there are a lot of articles about tech/lack of sleep etc., etc., but Shane also addresses what our new found need for speed does to our ability to think clearly and to form opinions thoughtfully, instead of coming up with glib answers to almost everything. Worth reading.

This week Krista Tippet’s On Being’s “The Pause” featured an article by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel about life viewed through the lens of death.

Zenju is a Buddhist monk. She is also a lesbian. And she writes about breaking silence:

I don’t write to receive pity or an apology for the hurts imposed upon me. I write to speak up, to acknowledge the devastation wrought among us when a human life is omitted in the midst of humanity and treated as less than a treasure amid life in general.

It seems wise to keep Zenju’s words on the tip of our tongues before we knee-jerk into what is “good” and what is “bad.”

Of What Had I Ever Been Afraid?

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

My father was already sixty years old when I was born. So even at a young age, I was aware of death looming over him. Riding around town in his Buick was one of our father-daughter activities. One day, I saw my father go out to the car. I waited, expecting him to call me out to take a ride with him. The minutes ticked by but he had not called me. I decided to go out and check on this ride I was expecting. I peeked into the window of the car he cherished. He was slumped over, unmoving on the seat. Was he dead?

How to Find Silence in a Noisy World

A New York Times Op-Docs 360 video

“Sanctuaries of Silence” takes you on a virtual journey into one of Earth’s last remaining bastions of true quiet — the Hoh Rain Forest, in Washington State. Shooting in beautifully immersive 360 video, directors Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee follow acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton as he explores the mossy, green heart of silence. In “Sanctuaries of Silence,” the threat is not so much to a place, as to our very ability to encounter the natural world on its own terms. As Hempton puts it, “Silence isn’t the absence of something, but the presence of everything.”

This week Larry Lynn, co-founder of the grief and loss website After Talk, featured Rabbi Berger’s famous Yom Kippur sermon, which he delivered shortly after the 1986 Challenger spacecraft exploded and all on board died. I understand why Berger’s sermon is read to this day. What is incomprehensible is his own demise a few years later. 

FIVE MINUTES TO LIVE is a famous sermon given by Rabbi Kenneth Berger on Yom Kippur day in the fall of 1986. It was inspired by the crash of the Challenger space shuttle on January 28, 1986 and the subsequent revelation that the crew had likely survived the explosion and lived for another five minutes while the craft plunged 48,000 feet into the ocean. The catastrophe compelled Rabbi Berger to contemplate what those five minutes would have been like for the seven crew members.

Three years after he gave this sermon, Rabbi Berger, his wife, Aviva, and his three children were returning from vacation on United Airlines flight 232. An engine exploded, and for 40 minutes passengers were told to prepare for a crash landing. The plane exploded on impact, killing 112 people including the Rabbi and his wife. His three children survived.

FIVE MINUTES TO LIVE

by Rabbi Kenneth Berger

Dear Friends:

The scene still haunts me: It was perhaps the most awful moment of the past year. Against the pale blue sky on a crystal clear Florida day, the space shuttle Challenger exploded before our very eyes. Seven brave astronauts, who just a few hours before were chatting with the press, schmoozing with proud relatives and friends, were suddenly gone.

I bring this to your attention because life and death is a major theme of Yom Kippur. We read in our prayer book:

Who shall live, and who shall die?

‘Who shall attain the measure of man ‘s days and who shall not?