Dear Mom, It is a bit wacky to write to you now that you are gone from this life. I do talk to you when I am alone, as many people talk to their loved ones, I understand. On this Mother’s Day, I wanted to…

This is an excerpt from my to-be-published book “From Fear to Eternity: Embodying Grace to Those Who Suffer.” It is part of a chapter about my mother and me, after my father died. Wayne is my older brother and Sharon is his wife.   Eventually,…

Susan looks like a blond opera singer, but she actually does jazz standards, pop and gospel. House-sitting and water aerobics are currently her “real” jobs.  When I started “Music Is Good Medicine,” a program to take volunteer musicians to individual patients in the hospital, she…

When I was an impressionable youngster, my Mom observed to me that I had “a short neck” and should not wear turtleneck shirts or sweaters. So, for many years, I followed her instructions, implicitly believing what my Mom had told me. In my late twenties,…

“My Mom said, ‘The policeman may not catch you. I may not see you, but God will always see you.’ You cannot outsmart God,” Ionna said in a strong Ukranian accent. “Because if I tried to do some crap or anything, I felt like somebody…

Rita was my age and she was dying from late stage lung cancer. She was tall, maybe six feet tall and big-boned. She said she’d lost a lot of weight, but now seemed at a good weight, not too thin. She had short gray hair,…