The Boundary Conditions Being What They Are

I’ve written books and didn’t find the experience pleasant: I’d go underground for 2 or 3 or 4 years, maybe 5, and when I’d stick my head up into the light of the world again, the world was changed. Like, during one of my underground sessions, the internet took hold and when I surfaced, the […]

Make Me Like a Tree, and Leave Me

When I die, I want to be gently curled into the fetal position and put into one of those biodegradable pods from which a tree of my choice will grow. (I’m thinking weeping willow, for the drama of its wild hair, or maybe something ancient and delicious-smelling like a magnolia.) Or dress me in a […]

How Are You? A meditation on death

Q: I’m so sorry to hear about your stepmom. How are you? A: Oh, thanks. I’m fine. I’ll be ok. A: I’m managing, I guess.   A: Yeah, it has been hard. It was so sudden. A: I’m . . . I don’t know. I’m coping, I guess. I have a bunch of mints in my […]

Redux: Until the Bitter End

My grandma died yesterday morning. She did not go quickly or painlessly. It was not what most would consider a good death. Difficult, heart-wrenching decisions were made. I want nothing more than to write about how her life ended — about how the system failed her, about how the system is failing so many people […]

Redux: A Death In the Forest

Note: This post originally appeared in December of 2016. I find a stick and use it to break up the dry twists of coyote scat I have found on the trail. Shit is nature’s obituary page. In each pile are the traces of lives recently lost. In this particular excreta I find a sprinkling of […]

Last Days of the Dog

\Here, as this Year of the Dog begins, we are the deciders, choosing which day will be the last for our 15-year-old Korean Jindo, Waits. How does one know when it is time? Is his life still a good thing, to him, if he cannot easily rise to drink water, if he cannot control his […]

Redux: A Wolf Dies

Recently, a bounty was announced for the poacher of wolf designated as OR-33 that was shot in Klamath County, Oregon. Rob Klavins, a staffer at the non-profit Oregon Wild, wrote a eulogy for the animal, in which he lamented that “[O]f all the wolves I’ve been privileged to have some deeper understanding of, not a single […]

Motherhood Week: The End Can Be Like This

My mother was dying. It was time to get ready. First came the visit to a funeral home where we walked among the coffins as if shopping for a new couch. Deep woods polished shiny; insides pillowed, all velvets and ruffles; pallbearer handlebars in brass or chrome. But no, too fancy, and she’d be cremated anyway, […]