This past weekend I attended the annual fall meeting of the Board of Directors of the Bereaved Parents of the USA. One of the topics that came up in our discussions was the inevitable change in family dynamics when a member of the family dies. Many events can shift the interactions among family members – a child relocates to college, for example, or starts an independent adult life, or someone moves far away, or makes a significant life change. However, death means that some

Like many people, I grew up believing in a cause-and-effect relationship between how you live and what life brings – in other words, if you treat others with kindness and work hard and do your best, you will be rewarded with good things such as long life, happiness, and security. However, after cancer and the loss of my brother as well as witnessing the difficulties and heartbreaks suffered by so many people, I have grown to believe that no consistent, trustworthy connection

I have a folder on my computer where I keep blog posts, both finished and unfinished. Over the last couple of months it has grown to include around fifteen drafts in various stages of completion. Some are overwritten and need to be pared down. Some have as little two or three lines of text. Some meander and don’t know what they intend to say. Whatever their status, none are ready to release into the world. For some reason I can’t yet get them to the finish line. This “almost