Visit dethmama.blogspot.com

You should check out dethmama's blog right now for two reasons. 

1) She has a great story about her first experience with "the unexplained" in the passing of a patient. 

2) On March 4, she is hosting the second round of Palliative Care Grand Rounds—a monthly blog carnival highlighting what's out there in cyberspace that covers issues of hospice care, death, dying, grieving, caregiving, etc. It's your best opportunity this month to see what the cyber community is writing about these topics. And dethmama is a gripping writer, so I'm sure her turn at the rounds is something not to be missed. 

Fantastic Death

I'm reading a new novel by Jonathan Carroll called The Ghost in Love that deals with the aftermath of a man not dying when he should, in a fantastical way. A representative of the angel of death is left in limbo, hanging out on Earth, waiting for him to die. In the meantime, this ghost in limbo falls in love with the man's ex-girlfriend, hence the title of the book. I've just started the novel, but so far, it is full of humor and the most beautiful, non-saccharine sentimentality.

Here's an excerpt that I particularly like:
"She fell in love easily but walked away just as easily from a relationship when it went bad. Some men—and there had been many of them—thought this showed she was coldhearted, but they were wrong. German Landis simply didn't understand people who moped. Life was too interesting to choose suffering. Although she got a big kick out of him, she thought her brother Guy, was goofy for spending his life writing songs only about things that either stank or sucked. In response, he drew a pictue of what her gravestone would look like if he designed it: a big yellow smiley face on it and the words I LIKE BEING DEAD!
Little did either of them know that she would like it when her time came to die, years later. German Landis would move into death as she'd moved into new schoos, relationships, or phases of her life: full speed ahead, hopes ahoy, heart filled like a sail with reasonalbe optimism and belief that the gods were fundamentally benevolent, no mater where she was."

I love the notion that Carroll is presenting here that personality and attitude in life can carry over in to the way a person moves into death. It makes for a fun, life-affirming—and death-affirming for that matter—narrative.

Alan Cheuse gave a poignant review of this novel, and nobel winner Jose Saramago's novel Death with Interruptions, which has recently been tranlated into English. That book is also on my list or to-reads.

ghosts have unfinished business

Why is it, that no matter whether the depiction is serious or light-hearted, every time we see a story about ghosts, the assumption is that they're hanging around because they have some unfinished business to take care of?

Here's a preview from Ricky Gervais' new film Ghost Town.


And here's from the classic horror film The Sixth Sense.


Why can't ghosts ever just be here because they're here? And where do these movies assume they go once the business is done? With all the mystery surrounding afterlife and whether ghosts even exists, it's interesting that everyone is so certain the storyline purpose of a ghost is unfinished business.

Is the Moore Theater Haunted?

Recently, at a show at Seattle's Moore Theater, the boyfriend and I were discussing whether the theater could actually be haunted, as it is often said to be. He thinks no. I think I'm not sure.

Here's what I've experienced. In 2004, I attended an Iron and Wine show with my good friend Mike. Our seats were general admission for the top balcony. We were running late, and by the time we arrived, Iron and Wine had just started their set. It was already dark in the theater, and the ushers were unwilling to help us find a seat in the mass of people. The rows at The Moore are steep, and the seats are packed in tightly. It's not the kind of place where you want to go wandering around in the dark. So, we decided to just stand along the wall at the front of the top balcony and watch the show from there.

The theater crescendos in a dome shape that is punctuated with several statues of women, almost Grecian looking. Midway through the show, one of the faces of the women began to look populated to me—that's the only way I can think to describe it. Then, after a few minutes, the face seemed less like that of a Grecian lady and more like a crusty sailor, with a beard and hardened features. It wasn't so much like the statue transformed as it gave off that impression. I elbowed Mike to ask him if he was seeing what I was seeing, without telling him what I was seeing, and he said, very deadpan, "Yes."

The "populated" statue just looked at us for the rest of the show. It wasn't frightening. In fact, I don't even remember having any particular emotion about it, except maybe curiosity. After the show, we compared notes, and it seemed like we had indeed had the same experience.

This could have been a shared hallucination based on the play of light, stress, you name it. We could have both imagined it. There are all sorts of ways to poke holes in our experience. And I'm not saying I stand behind it 100%. I'm just sharing what happened.

The Medium Provides A Message

This photo is from my sister (commenter CRKodama). It's of our parents' backyard last winter. She sent it to me over email and wrote, "When I was taking photos in the backyard, I was trying to pick out the best one. I was looking at them on the Wii so they were as big as the TV, and I noticed this one. I am not saying it's a ghost, but if you look at it, it looks like a woman or girl posing for the camera in a purple outfit, in front of the tree and on the Wii she looked like she had leather tie boots like a native american. Dad said, 'That looks like a person, turn it off.' It creeped him out! I thought it was cool!"
You can see the figure she is talking about outlined in white, against the tree. Now, I don't know if I believe in ghosts or not, and I don't know if I believe it's possible to take pictures of ghosts or not ... but it's fun to think about. Do other people have photos like this, or have you heard stories about such photos? I took one on a high school trip to England. It was at William the Conquerer's castle and had a blob of what looked like white light that couldn't be explained by the flash or the position of sun. Whatever you believe on the subject, I'd be interested to hear. I thought this would be fun to share. I also thought my dad's reaction was sweet. He LOVES his backyard and I don't think he was wants photographic evidence that he's sharing it with an other-worldly being.