I can’t say for sure, but I think I had, like, three more tables to clean before I could leave work and get on with my Wednesday night when I looked up and saw HLN1 on the 9 inch television2 above the big round table in the back of the restaurant. I recognized the face on the screen immediately....

News reports today share the sad new that Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, has passed away after a long illness. Jobs, it’s reported, had pancreatic cancer, a particularly insidious form of the disease. The particular headline I read stated Jobs “lost his fight” against cancer. The media uses this...

One Saturday evening several weeks ago, I heard that 27-year-old Amy Winehouse had died, and even though I’m not familiar with much of her music, the news hit me hard. I stayed up past 2 a.m. crying for the troubled soul that was too fragile to withstand the angst of an artists’ creative process...

Every major news source in the country headlined a little Missouri town called Joplin yesterday. I’m from there. So are about 49,000 other people, but I’m not there at the moment. I’m about as far away from there as possible. I’m in China. The tornado ripped through the center of the city. Destroying...

Editor’s Note: More reflections on the news of bin Laden’s death this week from our contributors here and here. There are some things about myself that I have learned I just need to accept. Some of these things are fairly superficial, like my looks, or my unfaltering obsession with anything...

Illustration by Jeff Gill Death is a farmer who rises before dawn and eats the same plate of eggs and bacon And drinks bitter coffee from the same ceramic mug that his son bought him when he was in the first grade, just before he joined the Army. The farmer grabs his faded cap and ambles to the...

In July 2003, after seven months of a mystery illness, I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. At stage 3B (there are only 4 stages, and B meant it had begun spreading around my body) the tumour in my chest was as big as a saucer. My treatment consisted of three months of chemotherapy...

It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch. A fearful thing to love, hope, dream: to be To be, and oh! to lose. A thing for fools, this, a holy thing, A holy thing to love. For your life has lived in me, Your laugh once lifted me, Your word was gift to me. To remember this brings painful joy. ‘Tis...

Ruess, Lange said he wrote to you.  Go easy on him.  He can wax downright eloquent about the recent past but between the lines is a lot of hurt.  Quite a few family and friends blackballed them when little Karen got pregnant.  His wife, Rebecca, went completely zombie on him, useless as jello. ...

Recently I was riding the in the car with my dad discussing, of all things, death. My dad is a physician, and we were discussing the monumental costs and challenges that come with end of life care. I shared with him some conversations I had observed in classes at my seminary where both students and professors...