For Hez

Death is nothing at all.

I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I and you are you, whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by my old familiar name. Speak to me in the easy way you always used. Put no difference into your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we always enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effort, without the ghost of a shadow in it.

Life means all that it ever meant, it is the same as it ever was. There is absolute unbroken continuity.

What is death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner.

All is well.
Nothing is past; nothing is lost.

One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

(Canon Henry Scott-Holland, 1847-1918, Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, sermon delivered in St Paul’s Cathedral on Whitsunday 1910, while the body of King Edward VII was lying in state at Westminster.)

My sincere (belated) condolences to you and your family.

regards

Something new for me …

Yesterday, I joined the National Marrow Donor registry, to donate bone marrow and/or peripheral circulating blood cells, which are stem cells in the blood which produce blood cells.

The donation process, of course, is much different than a simple whole blood donation, but the screening and tissue typing was quite simple. I just filled out about three pages of personal information, most of which was emergency contact information, and gave 4 mouth swabs.

Race and ethnicity do play major roles in transplant tissue matching, so there is a desperate need for people who identify themselves as Black or African American, American Indian, Alaska Native, Asian, Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latino to join to potential donor pool.

So now there’s a tiny bit more Native American DNA in the registry I may never get called to donate, but I feel good about being available. And if I do ever donate, I immediately join the elite bunch of blood and tissue donors who get invited to the annual Donor Recognition dinner, which I was lucky enough to attend with my mother (a 10 gallon blood donor) last week. More on that later

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