A few weeks ago I blogged about freeing my bunny, Bella.  Amazingly, for three weeks, she hung around our back yard as happy as could be.  I would feed her a daily treat, hold her in my lap and sing to her.  She grazed and roamed amongst the patches of clover. (more…)

It had been a week of fever, crushing headache, body aches, joint pain, and a mysterious rash when I finally panicked and went to the emergency room for evaluation.  What a bizarre world is the ER.  I saw a man, severely sunburned from head to toe, who had fallen asleep in the sun.  I saw another man pulling teeth out of his mouth, stating that he had fallen down a flight of stairs.  I saw a mother holding a listless child in her arms. (more…)

For 3 decades, he had two waist-length signature braids and then . . . snip . . . they were gone.  It has been heralded as “the haircut heard around the world”.  Why?  Who?  Willie Nelson, of course.  I grew up in Texas where he was an icon.  For all of us, those braids were his identity. (more…)

A sea of mortarboard caps . . . seniors with tear-soaked tissues . . . parents dabbing at moist eyes.  Pomp.  Circumstance.  Ah . . . graduation.

When I graduated from high school, I was overcome by the end of life as I knew it.  It was not only the end of school but also the end of my residence in Texas and the end of living with my parents.  When I graduated from college, I was likewise cognizant of the ‘death’ of everything familiar. (more…)

She walked to the front of the room and slid a daisy into the vase.  Speaking softly, almost as if to the flower, she murmured, “For my dear mother who passed away two months ago.”  I was on the second row, about to sing with a small group at this hospice memorial service.  The poignant flower ritual was designed to honor and remember the deceased. (more…)