T         E         A         R         S
it seems like the one thing that the World and all of its inhabitants actually universally share, no mater who we are or how tough or weak we think we are
e    s    p    e    c    i    a    l    l    y
when someone we love dies.          .          .

This past week I was doing a funeral for an elderly man who had no immediate family, but he had cousin-in-laws and their families who came to celebrate his life.

I’ve long believed that the thing about weddings and now funerals, is that the the only thing that’s traditional about either of them, is that there is nothing traditional about either of them anymore.  No two day visitations and the third day a funeral.  A lot of the funerals that I conduct (usually 26 a month) sometimes are months down the road, (like the two I already have scheduled the day after Thanksgiving)

This particular funeral had the person having died three weeks ago, but it was the only time everyone could actually come together because of out of town circumstances.  There were less than 15 people attending, including the 6 children of various ages.

I was tempted to just have us literally circle the chairs and just talk about “George.”  There was no a somber tone to the service especially with the little ones literally running around and just as I finished the short welcome and opening prayer, 2 and 1/2 yr old Xavier comes running over to me, full sprint with arms open wide and jumps up into my arms.  Mind you, I’ve never met this family or this little guy.  There was a gasp from the family and then laughter as he shouted out, “I LOVE YOU!”

My service towards to him as I told him how happy I was that he was there and that I got to meet him.  As he wiggled out of my arms he reached into his pocket and pulled out a mangled band-aid and put it on my shoe
And he before I could thank him, he told me if was for my Boo Boo and then hugged my leg and said, “ALL BETTER”

The reaction was mixed horrified but mostly laughter.  How could you not “Ahhhhh” that?

Before we finished the celebration of “George” Xavier was back in my arms waving at everybody which ended with a loud  B E L C H.          .          .
G       R       I       E       F
comes to us in so many different ways,
NOT  ALWAYS  SAD
In his own way,
Xavier taught us a valuable lesson
that the famous poet, Robert Frost
once tried to share with us long ago
when he said that all he knows about life can be summed up in 3 words:
“IT GOES ON”

When Xavier’s parents and grandparents came up to me following the service, red-faced and apologetic, I thanked them for BRINGING Xavier instead of having him at home or back at the hotel with a babysitter, to prove again, LIFE GOES ON as it does.  He showed us all that we walk around with Boo Boo’s that may not be in need of band-aids so much as hugs that make us feel, “ALL BETTER”

.             .            .on the way home, band-aid still on my shoe, I thought, when’s the last time I BROUGHT that and grateful then and now, that Xavier, my small
Caring Catalyst friend,
D          I          D

Tracey Schmidt’s poetic reading of a Blessing for Our Death reminds us of the complexities of life – how we can be gatekeepers and entrance points, light filled and vulnerable, lonely and loved, all at the same time. She praises life and exhorts us to do the same, to “sing as if tomorrow will not come because one day it will not.” This singing of life’s praises enables us to live fully, “as if home were everywhere and you are no longer a guest but a loved and welcome member.”

L   I   V   E
L         I          V          E
W   E   L   L

I was doing some DOSTADNING lately and I found an article I had tucked away from some 5 years ago from Time Magazine and I thought it was more than appropriate to share with you during a Wednesday Blog Post which I always try to feature some educational piece on how to be better Caring Catalysts in all phases and forms of our lives

DOSTADNING, is a Swedish hybrid of the words for death and cleaning. And as morbid as it sounds, that’s exactly what death cleaning is: the process of cleaning house before you die, rather then leaving it up to your loved ones to do after you’re gone.

A book called The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning makes the case that the task isn’t morbid at all. Author Margareta Magnusson—a Swedish artist who describes herself as somewhere between age 80 and 100—says it’s “more like a relief,” and that it has benefits you can enjoy while you’re still very much alive.

“Generally people have too many things in their homes,” says Magnusson in a YouTube video posted by the book’s publisher. “I think it’s a good thing to get rid of things you don’t need.” Magnusson says she’s always death cleaned, “because I want to have it nice around me, keep some order.”

Magnusson says people should start thinking about death cleaning as soon as they’re old enough to start thinking about their own mortality. “Don’t collect things you don’t want,” she says. “One day when you’re not around anymore, your family would have to take care of all that stuff, and I don’t think that’s fair.”

The Death Cleaning method bears similarities to that of the tidying-up guru Marie Kondo: Keep what you love and get rid of what you don’t. But while Kondo tells people to trash, recycle or donate what they discard, Magnusson recommends giving things you no longer want to family and friends “whenever they come over for dinner, or whenever you catch up with them,” reports the Australian website Whimn.

However, Magnusson does advocate for keeping sentimental objects like old letters and photographs. She keeps a “throw-away box,” which she describes as things that are “just for me.” When she dies, her children know they can simply throw that box away, without even looking through its contents.

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning is out for U.S. publication If the trend catches on stateside, it could be a good way for families to discuss sensitive issues that might otherwise be hard to bring up, says Kate Goldhaber, a family therapist and assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Loyola Medicine. I am already working this into one of my presentations, THE SPIRITUALITY OF DEATH AND DYING

“It seems like a nice, proactive approach to facilitating cooperation and communication among families early on in the aging process, when you’re not too entrenched in the difficult parts later on,” says Goldhaber. “There can also be something very empowering and healthy about taking care of your own space and making it more organized while you’re still around.”

Death cleaning may have benefits for the cleaners themselves, and not just for their loved ones, says Goldhaber. Some research suggests that clutter in the home can raise stress levels and reduce productivity. As adults get older, having a house full of stuff may also raise their risk for falls and create other health and safety hazards.

Goldhaber points out that many people may engage in a type of death cleaning without calling it that—when they downsize from a large house to a small apartment as they get older, for instance. “It’s a new way of thinking about the grunt work that comes along with those transitions, which can be really stressful,” she says.

If bringing up the concept of death with aging loved ones still feels wrong, Goldhaber suggests rephrasing the idea. “If you present it as, ‘Let’s organize the house so it’s a more enjoyable place for you to live and for us to have holidays,’ it might be better received than ‘Let’s throw away your stuff now so we don’t have to sort through it later,’” she says. “It can be fun, even late in life, to redecorate and declutter, and it can be a great thing for families to do together.”

Magnusson says that death cleaning is an ongoing process that’s never truly finished. “You don’t know when you are going to die, so it goes on and on,” she says in the video.

Her daughter chimes in, stating the obvious: Death cleaning ends with death. Magnusson laughs and nods. “Then it stops,” she says, “of course, finally.”

Maybe we all need to be doing some serious DOSTNADING before we die
but as we live
know that before we put anything in a box
OURSELVES INCLUDED
K         N        O       W
t  h  a  t
DEATH IS NOT THE LAST THING THAT HAPPENS TO US
Our lives
as we know them
will not continue as we know them
b            u            t
SHELVED AND BOXED
we will not be.          .          .

With a wide-reaching spiritual message in books like “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” he drew on his own experience with grief and doubt.

By Sam Roberts

Rabbi Harold Kushner, a practical public theologian whose best-selling books assured readers that bad things happen to good people because God is endowed with unlimited love and justice but exercises only finite power to prevent evil, died on Friday in Canton, Mass. He was 88.

His death, in hospice care, was confirmed by his daughter, Ariel Kushner Haber.

Several of Rabbi Kushner’s 14 books became best-sellers, resonating well beyond his Conservative Jewish congregation outside Boston and across religious boundaries in part because they had been inspired by his own experiences with grief, doubt and faith. One reviewer called his book “When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough” a “useful spiritual survival manual.”

Rabbi Kushner wrote “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” (1981) after the death of his son, Aaron. At age 3, just hours after the birth of the Kushners’ daughter, Aaron was diagnosed with a rare disease, progeria, in which the body ages rapidly.

When Aaron was 10 years old, he was in his 60s physiologically. He weighed only 25 pounds and was as tall as a three-year-old when he died in 1977 two days after his 14th birthday.

“Like a lot of children who feel they’re going to die soon, he was afraid he would be forgotten because he didn’t live long enough, not knowing parents never forget,” Rabbi Kushner told the alumni magazine Columbia College Today in 2008. “I promised I’d tell his story.”

The book was rejected by two publishers before it was accepted by Schocken Books. It catapulted to No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list and transformed Rabbi Kushner into a popular author and commentator.

“It was my very first inkling of how much suffering was out there, all over the world, that religion was not coping with,” he told The Times in 1996.

His thesis, as he wrote in the book, was straightforward: “It becomes much easier to take God seriously as the source of moral values if we don’t hold Him responsible for all the unfair things that happen in the world.”

Rabbi Kushner also wrote:

“I don’t know why one person gets sick, and another does not, but I can only assume that some natural laws which we don’t understand are at work. I cannot believe that God ‘sends’ illness to a specific person for a specific reason. I don’t believe in a God who has a weekly quota of malignant tumors to distribute, and consults His computer to find out who deserves one most or who could handle it best

i“‘What did I do to deserve this?’ is an understandable outcry from a sick and suffering person, but it is really the wrong question. Being sick or being healthy is not a matter of what God decides that we deserve. The better question is, ‘If this has happened to me, what do I do now, and who is there to help me do it?’”

He was making the case that dark corners of the universe endure where God has not yet succeeded in making order out of chaos. “And chaos is evil; not wrong, not malevolent, but evil nonetheless,” he wrote, “because by causing tragedies at random, it prevents people from believing in God’s goodness.”

Unpersuaded, the journalist, critic and novelist Ron Rosenbaum, writing in The New York Times Magazine in 1995, reduced Rabbi Kushner’s thesis more dialectically: “diminishing God to something less than an Omnipotent Being — to something more like an eager cheerleader for good, but one decidedly on the sidelines in the struggle against evil.”

“In effect,” he wrote, “we need to join Him in rooting for good — our job is to help cheer Him up.”

Rabbi Kushner argued, however, that God was omnipotent as a wellspring of empathy and love.

Image

Harold Samuel Kushner was born on April 3, 1935, to Julius and Sarah (Hartman) Kushner in the East New York section of Brooklyn. His mother was a homemaker. His father owned Playmore Publishing, which sold toys and children’s books, especially Bible stories, from a shop at Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street that he hoped his son would take over. Harold felt he lacked his father’s business sense.

“The only thing worse than competing with my father and failing would be competing with him and outdoing him,” he said. “Going into the rabbinate was not a way of saying, ‘I’m rejecting what you’re doing.’ I’m affirming it.”

He was raised in Brooklyn (the family moved to the Crown Heights section when he started elementary school), where he was a passionate Brooklyn Dodgers fan. After graduating from Erasmus Hall High School, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in 1955 and a master’s there in 1960.

He had planned to major in psychology but switched to literature after studying under Prof. Mark Van Doren, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. On a lark, but armed with a solid religious upbringing, he enrolled in an evening program at the Jewish Theological Seminary. By his junior year at Columbia he had decided to become a rabbi.

After Columbia, he enrolled full-time at the seminary where he was ordained, graduated in 1960 and received his doctorate in 1972. He studied later at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He volunteered for two years in the Army’s Chaplain Corps at Fort Sill, Okla., where he became a first lieutenant. Returning to New York after his discharge, he served for four years as an assistant rabbi at Temple Israel in Great Neck, N.Y., on Long Island.

Rabbi Kushner married Suzette Estrada in 1960 and moved to Massachusetts, where he became rabbi of Temple Israel in Natick, a suburb of Boston, in 1966. He served as the congregational rabbi there for 24 years and remained a member of the congregation until he moved into a senior living residence in Canton in 2017.

His wife died in 2022. His brother, Paul, a rabbi in Bellmore and Merrick on Long Island, died in 2019. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by two grandchildren.

Among Rabbi Kushner’s other books are “How Good Do We Have to Be? A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness” (1997), “Living a Life That Matters” (2001) and “The Lord Is My Shepherd: Healing Wisdom of the 23rd Psalm” (2003).

He also collaborated with the novelist Chaim Potok in editing “Etz Hayim: A Torah Commentary,” the official commentary of Conservative Jewish congregations, which was published by the Rabbinical Assembly and the Jewish Publication Society in 2001.

Rabbi Kushner often said he was amazed at the breadth of his readership across theological lines. In 1999, he was named clergyman of the year by the organization Religion in American Life. In 2007, the Jewish Book Council gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award.

In his books, other writings and on-air commentary, often as a radio and television talk show guest, he became a font of aphorisms embraced by clergy of all denominations. Among them were: “Forgiveness is a favor we do for ourselves, not a favor we do to the other party,” and, “If we hold our friends to a standard of perfection, or if they do that to us, we will end up far lonelier than we want to be.”

“People who pray for miracles usually don’t get miracles, any more than children who pray for bicycles, good grades, or good boyfriends get them as a result of praying,” he wrote. “  But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have left instead of what they have lost, very often find their prayer answered.”

He explained that his book “When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough” was intended to be “an examination of the question of why successful people don’t feel more satisfied with their lives.”

“Drawing on the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes, it suggests that people need to feel that their lives make a difference to the world,” he wrote. “We are not afraid of dying so much as of not having lived.”

Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:

One out of One of us dies. . .even Rabbi’s  I first fell in love with this book even before I opened up the cover to the first page just by the Title: WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE  Did you catch it?  W H E N not IF   We live in a world today that not only defies DEATH, it actually believes it doesn’t exist; that a drug, a therapy, an intervention, even a prayer, eliminates the possibility of it in our lives.

Rabbi Kushner showed us that DEATH and GRIEF are real; they are not to be cured, but HEALING is more than possible.          .          .
NOW THAT IS A LITTLE HARSH.         .          .
T        R        U        T        H
SOLUTION TO LIFE AND DEATH:
LOVE
THE
DEEPEST

The Sand And The Foam – Dan Fogelberg Inspired by Khalil Gibran’s book “Sand and Foam”. from The Innocent Age Album (released 1981) (The Sand And The Foam Lyrics)

Dawn, like an angel, lights on the step Muting the morning she heralds Dew on the grass like the tears the night wept Gone long before the day wears old (Chorus) Time stills the singing a child holds so dear And I’m just beginning to hear Gone are the pathways the child followed home Gone like the sand and the foam Pressed in the pages of some aging text Lies an old lily a-crumbling Marking a moment of childish respects Long since betrayed and forgotten (Chorus) (Repeat First Verse and Chorus) Gone like the sand Gone like the sand Gone like the sand and the foam

I remember getting this vinyl album (AND I STILL HAVE IT) when it was first released in 1981.  I was a little over a year of being ordained and used it for youth group workshops when we talked about LIFE and yes, DEATH.

It was 13 years before I began my journey as a hospice chaplain and I’ve heard it countless times since 1981 and have it on multiple playlists I play.  It takes on an entirely different meaning to me now some 28 years later, long down my hospice journey road.

When it popped up randomly the other day, I was sitting in a parking lot of a Walmart with 33 minutes before a funeral I was going to conduct.  I wonder if Fogelberg was thinking about his own life/death and the ever-so-brief frailty and quickness of life.  He died in 2007 after battling advanced prostate cancer for three years.

AGAIN…the words took on a different meaning for me.

As I kept hitting repeat
REPEATEDLY
these words came to my shore
and hopefully now will ebb up on yours
As we do our own dance with
The Sand and the Foam:

YOU CAN’T BE LATE FOR MY FUNERAL

It may be too cold
Rainy
or a snow that wants to imitate it
It may be hot
With a humidity that begs for a breeze
not to be found
It may be greening Spring
a Summer’s hued sunset
A Fall’s Frosted pumpkin morning
Or a Winter’s pristine glistening white snowfall afternoon
You can’t be late for my funeral
It’s been indefinitely canceled
Postponed for a day
that doesn’t exist
You can’t be late for my funeral
because there’ll be no celebration of my life
No curious resurrection
If something never ended
but continued on in other ongoing ways
What makes for a HAPPY ENDING
is knowing there’s never an
everlasting one

I was in college and trying to pay my way through as best as I could when of all things my grandmother, Vi got me a job that no one knew the implications.  It was working at a Pipe/Tobacco store where I sold expensive Meerschaum pipes down to ones that look like Popeye would toke on in between downing cans of spinach.

The real behind the scenes stuff was the great stuff.          .          .I would cover for Charlie my boss, who was either out cheating on his wife or playing poker with the boys when his wife would call and he’d look the other way when I took REESES CUPS and SNICKERS for dinner; it was a good deal made better when the Pipe shop would close and I would go a half of a block down the street to his retail store where he sold a host of mostly unnecessary plastic objects and a few vinyl records.  It was there that I sold hundreds of Olivia Newton-John’s records:

I never tagged her as Country-Western but that’s the section Charlie wanted to peg her under and I spent a lot of time hitting the cash register tune of glorious sales for him and her.

THIS is hardly what anyone would remember about Olivia Newton-John after hearing of her death earlier this week.  WHAT IS BEING REMEMBERED AND CELEBRATED is just what a ferocious Caring Catalyst she has always been.  Having been diagnosed with Breast Cancer well over 30 years ago, she never took the “WHY ME?” stance or the “I WILL NEVER DIE” denial position; Olivia made sure that something way past her last song would not just be remembered but used her platform to become an advocate, a Caring Catalyst for all cancers–spending tons of time, energy, and money building research organizations, clinics, and more.

Craig Marshall is a guy I met through National Speakers Association who often tells the story:

There’s still Olivia Newton-John…. When I was a monk, I had an coaching session with a man that told me the saddest story I ever heard. He’d been in a car accident, which killed several of his children. His wife was in a coma for months and then died. He lost his job and his dog died. It was sad beyond words. But when he ended telling me his litany of loss, he paused and looked at me and whist-fully said, “But you know what? There’s still Olivia Newton-John!” Years went by, and I found myself sitting at an outdoor restaurant table in Malibu, designing a book cover with my good friend Fred Segal.

 After discussing some graphic possibilities, Freddie said, “We’re guys. We need some different input,” and he yelled over to two ladies sitting at a nearby table, “Come over here please.” They came over, sat down, and Fred started asking them about what they thought his book cover should look like. After awhile, for whatever, reason, everyone at the table got up and began talking to friends who’d entered the restaurant, leaving me alone with this poised blonde lady with an English/Australian accent. It suddenly hit me, and I said, “Are you Olivia Newton-John?” and she said yes. I told her, “I’m so glad to meet you because I want to share with you a story of a man who lost almost everything in life, but clung to you as his only inspiration.”

 Olivia was always charming, and I ended up hosting several workshops at her home. She was always thoughtful, genuine and just lovely.

 I don’t know why people hope their departing loved ones “rest in peace”. I wish for Olivia great music, great fun, and great friends. Her smile is what I’ll remember. It was so dazzling that she never needed to wink. Like that guy, I also believe that there will always be Olivia Newton-John.

ONE OUT OF ONE OF US DIES
is one of the harshest realities ”
any of us with a pulse
will ever wrestle
B          U          T
there’s something that
goes beyond the Life
we live here
and that’s the
L               I               F               E
and that’s the
E  X  I  S  T  E  N  C  E
we inspire
in others
even make possible
way after we are gone
.          .          .that’s a huge part of what it means to be a Caring Catalyst
to begin in others
what will outlast us and even them
but never goes into extinction
as long as we keep sharing our very Best
for the Best of everyone else.          .          .
Yes, there’s still Olivia Newton-John
a Hopelessly Devoted Caring Catalyst

There are never any tears.          .          .
There is no sense of loss.           .          .
There isn’t any sadness.             .          .
“GRIEF” and “BEREAVEMENT” don’t exist
U  N  L  E  S  S
There is a LOVE greater than all of these things together
that even makes the tears possible.          .          .

Lots of people don’t watch TV|
Lots of people do.     .     .

Lots of people don’t watch
THIS  IS  US
Lots of people DO.  .  .

Some 4.97 Million watched this past Tuesday night
THE NEXT TO THE LAST SHOW
that had lots of
YOU-BETTER-GRAB-A-TOWEL
m o m e n t s
as we watched the matriarch, Rebecca Pearson
literally actively die in front of us
and what lots of hospice folks
COMPANION
(HOLD SPACE)
as a patient dies
and what they may be actually
(visioning)
feeling/seeing/sensing/experiencing
as they slip from this world
to the Great Whatever
lies beyond a last breath here
and a first breath
T H E R E

Nearly twenty-eight years of being a hospice chaplain has put me beside a lot of death beds of where I have companioned the dying and their loved ones.  I applaud the writers and the actors for pulling back the curtain and giving us a fairly realistic look at what THAT moment looks like. . .a moment each one or us will experience, without all of the lights, cameras, action settings but in a more real, intimate, personal way because all of the evidence-based data shares the irrefutable:
ONE OUT OF ONE OF US DIES

And here’s where  This Is Us Season 6, Episode 17 from this past Tuesday picks up.  After a long battle with Alzheimer’s, Rebecca (Mandy Moore) passed, and the way her family told her goodbye was beautiful. Viewers were taken inside Rebecca’s psyche (literally) as she approached death. For her, this manifested in the form of a moving train. Rebecca was young on the train, and the passengers were people in her life, past and present. Meanwhile, in real life, as Rebecca’s family said their final goodbyes, they appeared on the train. And the person leading her through this experience (a.k.a the conductor on the train) was William (Ron Cephas Jones).

At the end of the episode, after the family members have said their last words to Rebecca, she reaches the train’s caboose. “This is quite sad, isn’t it?” she asks William. “The end?” 

To this, William gives a beautiful, stunning speech to Rebecca. These are the last words she hears before going into the caboose (before she passes away). Read them in full, below: 

“The way I see it, if something makes you sad when it ends, it must have been pretty wonderful when it was happening. Truth be told, I always felt it a bit lazy to just think of the world as sad, because so much of it is. Because everything ends. Everything dies. But if you step back, if you step back and look at the whole picture, if you’re brave enough to allow yourself the gift of a really wide perspective, if you do that, you’ll see that the end is not sad, Rebecca. It’s just the start of the next incredibly beautiful thing.” 

With this, Rebecca hugs William and goes into the caboose, where a bed is waiting for. She lies down, and next to her is Jack (Milo Ventimiglia), reuniting the couple after decades of separation.

William’s speech epitomizes that moment—and it epitomizes This Is Us in general. If the show has taught us anything, it’s that nothing is forever. Any sadness or loss we saw the Pearsons experience in the present was always followed by a flash-forward, where we saw them happy, thriving, and doing just fine. Each storyline has shown us that no chapter is forever—the good ones end, and so do the bad ones. Life keeps moving, and we  move with it. It’s a comforting message for anyone experiencing a hard time. Chapters always, always come to a close. The great poet Robert Frost once said, “ALL I KNOW ABOUT LIFE CAN BE SUMMED UP IN THREE WORDS: IT GOES ON!

It’s something Chris Sullivan (Toby) told NBC Insider when talking about the legacy of This Is Us. “From the first episode, they show you tragedy and pain, but they also shoot you into the future and show you, ‘Oh, this family’s OK,'” he said. “We jump back and forth and see, ‘Oh my gosh, this father died in a fire.’  Then, we jump forward and see, ‘Oh, this family’s OK.’ Tragedy and joy are held in both hands…Everything cycles around.” 

Yes, it does. The series finale of This Is Us airs Tuesday, May 24 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.

Hey.      .      .it’s just TV, right.          .          .

YUP.  Yeah, it is.     .     .until it isn’t

THIS IS US

ALL OF US

“If something makes you sad when it ends, it must have been pretty wonderful when it was happening”… and with that, one last car. The caboose.
This Is Us
(Now about THAT towel)

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William E. Behrens, 90, of Washington, passed away at Southmont of Presbyterian Care, on Friday, October 8, 2021.

He was born on October 1, 1931, in Wheeling, WV, a son of the late Ellsworth and Rhea Eichenbrod Behrens.

Mr. Behrens graduated from Triadelphia High School, where he had met his future wife, and went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree from the University of South Carolina, where he attended on a football scholarship, and subsequently his Master’s degree from West Virginia University.

William proudly served in the United States Air Force, and was Honorably Discharged with the rank of Captain.

He was a long time member of Fairhill manor Christian Church, where he served as an elder.

Mr. Behrens was a teacher and a coach in the Washington, Trinity and South Fayette School Districts.

He was a Free Mason, and a member of the Edwin Scott Linton Post 175 of the American Legion.

William was a life long learner, and enjoyed traveling with his wife, and spending time with his family.

On June 7, 1952, he married Phyllis J. Snyder, who died on August 24, 2019.  They had celebrated 67 wonderful years together.

Surviving are four children, Deborah A. (William) Farrer, of Washington, Charles W. (Erin) Behrens, of Bay Village, OH, Michael E. (Mary) Behrens, of Washington, and Thomas (Marianne) Behrens, of San Antonio, TX; fifteen grandchildren, Katie (James) Hall, Maggie (Philip) Amaismeir, Gina (Anthony) Trovato, Angie Cozadd, Liv Maciak, Connor Behrens, Zoe Kowalski, Aubrey (David) Cincinnati, Brandon (Ami) Behrens, Cassandra (Michael) Hazlett, Derek Behrens, Patrick Behrens, Sydney Behrens, Colin Behrens, and Norah Behrens; and his much loved twenty-one great grandchildren.

Deceased, in addition to his parents, and wife, are two sisters and a brother.

Interment in the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies will be private.

It has been a week since my father died. I have long known about and taught and somewhat experienced the five stages of grief from the loss of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, special friends and now both of my parents.

I believe the grief is as individual and as unique and as intimate and individual to each of us that for me to say, “I know what you’re going through,” or “I understand, because, I too, have lost my father,  my mother, a brother a child, a good friend…” is never quite accurate.

Seven days into this new grief, what I’ve experienced more, it’s on the things that we don’t talk about or on a part of those stages, but still very real, very intimate, very individual and unique, at least to me.

Dare I say.        .       .
DARE I EVEN INSINUATE.            .            .
Another Face of GRIEF
.      .     .the one that has a
S            M            I            L            E
because of:

RELIEF. I feel a tremendous amount of relief with a good dose of a tinge of guilt, not so much because I won’t be making a couple of trips back to Washington, Pennsylvania on the weekend; not because I won’t be making phone calls in between visits or funerals or family obligations, but because I know my father is no longer confined to a bed or wheelchair or in his infamous words, “three walls and the ceiling.”

GRATITUDE. I feel an immense sense of gratitude over these past seven days. I often ask people sometimes at funerals and sometimes in presentations, “Listen,  if I have a magical door, and by walking through that magical door,  you would never shed another tear; you would never have a sense of loss; there would never be a moment of sadness at all, and all you had to do was just simply walk through the magical door, would you do it?  Now right off the cuff, you might be thinking, “Absolutely, get me to that door.”  But, like most things, there’s another side to the coin and yes, there are consequences for all of our actions and thoughts… so what is the catch here?  It’s true, you would never have any other moments of sadness; there would be no sense of loss; you would not shed another tear and grief wouldn’t exist, but it also would mean that the person that you grieve would have never been a part of your life, which in some instances means it it would be physically impossible for you to even be here. Who would choose THAT DOOR?  I’ve had a tremendous sense of gratitude not just because it would have been physically impossible for me to be here, but also because of all I’ve been able to be and do because I am here.  I am grateful for more  memories, it seems that my mind can hold or ever recall.  Gratitude.     .     .for all of those people who were able to care for my dad these past five years while he was in the nursing facility. I’ve grieved this in my own life and I sort of grieved it even before the passing of my dad: I want to be all things to all people, especially the people that I love the most.  Sometimes,  in spite of it, BEING ALL THINGS is the last thing that I am able to do for those special people in my life. BUT, it seems like that is exactly when there are other people that do exactly what’s needed way more than I could have ever possibly be able to do.  There have been these people in my father’s life who have gone way above and beyond their duties in offering an extraordinary compassionate care, not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually, and psychosocially. I find that “THANK YOU”  are words that seem so cheap, and cliché-like, you get a time like this because they can’t convey the depth of appreciation and gratitude that you have for what they’ve done, that you couldn’t

PEACE. Now that’s a definition that you may be able to look up in Webster‘s or you may be able to Google it, but exactly what is that, WHAT IS PEACE? It’s a word that has Vaseline all over it because it’s a meaning, a definition that is as unique, as intimate to each person as their own fingerprint. I often say to somebody that I know who is grieving and even at a funeral, that their loved one’s peace will now be their peace, and I believe that if we have the Peace that the loved one has, it’ll be a peace that having experienced it, will then be a part of you ongoing.

I’ve always found it interesting that the stages of grief are not often lived on actual stages, where people can come, pay for a ticket and watch, maybe even applaud, maybe even get a standing ovation to the performance that you give them. And yet, it’s often one that we are still judged.

The initial takeaway:  THIS GRIEF, the one that wears a smile on it’s distorted face, this grief,  is a gift, maybe the last one that our loved one ever gives us because it is the one that last forever. I don’t grieve my grief, I embrace it.  I refuse to go to THE DOOR that would erase it and though sometimes it may feel like hugging a porcupine,  I’ll hug it all the tighter and feel honored that I have it to hug tighter because that’s my last act of love received in and through me for Some One else  to experience when I too, am present but not here.            .            .

It’s tempting to grieve,
but I am severely happy
that what has begun with two people in love for over 70 years
and married for 67 of them,
started what they no way could imagine
would continue

and go on and on.          .          .

Yeah.          .           .
Sometimes
G            R            I            E            F
comes with a smile on its
F     a     C     e

No matter what religion or spiritual path you follow (or don’t), there’s one topic that fascinates us all:What happens after we die?

Reincarnation? Eternal Heaven? Total blackness and non-existence? Something totally different?

No matter what we believe though, there’s a few basic facts about death that we all know to be true.

The first fact of death is the obvious:
We’ve all been born with a sexually transmitted disease
called: LIFE
and none of us gets out of here
A  L  I  V  E

YES.   .   . we are all going to die. Yes, every single person on this planet is going to die someday, somehow, somewhere.

The second fact is less obvious:

After we die, our lives will be etched in the hearts of others. We live eternally. Forever. In other people.

That’s what today’s video is really about.

It’s about the relationships we forge during our lives that are so powerful they impact people even after we die.

Today’s movie is called “The Funeral.” It starts with a little bit of humor, and it quickly goes deep and gets to the heart of the matter.  .  .a heart that beats like no other when filled with a love that death can’t begin to part let alone forget.     .     .

SO HERE’S THE DEAL:

THE DEEPER YOU LOVE
THE DARKER YOU HURT
so.          .          .
LOVE DEEPER, STILL
LOVE DEEPER, MORE
L                   O                  V                  E