A Metaphor for Mondays

Years ago, I heard the phrase paralysis through analysis, and thought it a fitting description for my inertia brought on by over-thinking. As a chronic thinker, sometimes I'm still seduced into pondering rather than doing. Today seems to be one of those days.

My writerly self had planned to observe the specific details in my neighborhood while out for a morning walk. Instead, with each step those details receded further behind a curtain of mental chatter over something that had occurred yesterday.

While walking, I spoke my insights about the problem bothering me into a hand held recorder that I'd brought along. I'd intended to use it to capture metaphor for all the things I'd see, hear and smell on my outing. And while I suppose this rumination had some therapeutic value, it did nothing to inspire my muse.

Only vaguely do I remember the red and golden hued leaves, the brisk, moist air, the lone landscaper sodding a bare brown yard a few houses down. While I can't recall most of the outer details of my walk, I could write a script about the inner details. It would seem my observational mission for metaphor failed.

Then the last 100 yards before reaching home, I looked down and saw a sprout of leafy green jutting upward through a crack in the pavement. A 2-1/2" shoot rising from beneath the constricting concrete, it stretched skyward, proud and flowering. In stark contrast to its barren surroundings, it pushed past constraint to find an opening into the air and light.

If that isn't a metaphor for a thinking woman's life, I don't know what is.

What I Did During My Summer Vacation

A friend emailed me last week asking "What happened to your blog? Did I miss something?" I told her that life had happened and she'd missed a lot, but that I'd been thinking about it and would post something in the next week. So Patti, this one's for you (and my 6 other followers).

When I started the blog back in March I had planned to write two posts a week. At the time, recently renewed in my commitment to writing and just coming out of the fog from an unexpected job loss, I had all kinds of topics that I wanted to write about and plenty of time to do it. As spring wore on, one post a week seemed more manageable than two and by early May I thought two posts a month were better than four. Shortly after, when I was unexpectedly met with one family crisis after another, those two posts a month were the first to go.

In May our cat had emergency surgery to clean up an abscess, the apparent result of a cat bite. While I was running through the house trying to keep him from leaping onto table tops (the vet admonished jumping was prohibited), or knocking himself unconscious as he head-butted his cone-collar into furniture and walls, we had a couple of human crises: My 82 year old mother fell in a doctor's office and broke her foot while balancing on the other foot in an attempt to put on her shoe, and two days later another family member flew to L.A. to check into rehab.

For the next six weeks, I became a part-time caregiver for my mother, who was confined to a wheelchair for three of those weeks because crutches presented a further danger. Not a person of patience to begin with, it was an exercise in humility and an opportunity to repeatedly practice unhurried acceptance. Things previously taken for granted--pulling a plate out of the cupboard, washing her hair, going to the bathroom--all had to be re-thought and new temporary strategies devised so she could manage when I wasn't there to assist her. When she moved from wheelchair to walker for the final three weeks in the cast, once again new methods of navigation and adaptation were required for both of us.

Shortly after she got her cast off at the end of June, I came down with what I thought was a severe chest cold. After a week with no improvement, the onset of laryngitis and a mild form of pink eye (because it takes a few attempts to get my attention), I went to our family doctor who told me in his thick Indian accent, "You have a full blown bronchial infection." Fourteen days of antibiotics, a moratorium on my usual cycling and gym routines, and a self-imposed house quarantine only slowly relieved my symptoms. It would be another four weeks before I really started to feel better again.

Before I knew it, August arrived with its hellish heat. My sister and her family, who had been making box and furniture drops throughout the summer, now rolled into town to stay after finally selling their tiny, over-priced tract home in the Bay Area. My mother, although regaining her mobility and autonomy, was still experiencing pain and my husband celebrated a milestone birthday, which brought family members in from out of town. There were now new distractions with added family members and always more chores around the house.

By this time I had two writing related projects, for which the seeds had been planted in the spring, now beginning to bear fruit: a writing gig for a regional magazine and a writing program for incarcerated women. At the same time I was revising my resume and searching for teaching jobs.

And writing. Last month, I submitted an essay to a national magazine and entered one of my blog entries in another journal's "Best of the Blogs" contest. In the months since starting the blog, I formed a critique group with another writer and am making final revisions to a poem I'll soon be sending to still other journals. I've had the opportunity to join and serve in a local writer's group and to read my writing in the community.

Importantly, as I've begun to submit my essays, I've learned that publication of writing on a blog is considered by many magazines and journals work "previously published." It doesn't seem to matter if the readership is all of 7 people and not the Huffington Post.

Since my writing has evolved beyond that which I initially conceived, I'm having to revisit this blog's form and purpose. I plan to continue posting on a semi-regular basis my insight and oh-so scintillating observations on life lessons learned, but there probably won't be many more posts like Midlife Midriff's or Slumber Partings.

Still, my loyal friends and readers, I hope you'll hang in there with me. I thank you for your readership and encouragement. For the "hey, what's up with the blog?" nudges. For the gentle reminder that the next post is only a login away.

What’s Really For Dinner?

"No hormones added, minimally processed," my husband read from the packaged chicken he was holding over the cooler case in a big box grocery. Dubious, I took a closer look and pointed to the small asterisk followed by minuscule type: "FDA regulations prohibit the use of added hormones in poultry." So much for his food find. This scene is typical of our more recent meat buying exchanges: scrutinizing labels and searching for the caveat emptor.

What to buy (and how to cook it) has become a recurrent, sometimes contentious topic of conversation in our household. After some unexpected life changes prompted a values re-assessment, the pantry partnership began to get interesting. For me the desire to return to an organic, whole foods diet has become a call, for my husband but a whisper. Philosophically, he likes the idea of eating organically; financially, he's not so wild about it.

Nonetheless, on a recent Friday we set off on a mission to find our mightier meats. Our road trip around town took us to five grocery stores: two commercial chains, a big box, a national independent, and a local meat shop. By the time we finished we were more confused than enlightened, more tired than triumphant. And still meatless.

In addition to the grass-fed, free-range and organic labels we'd expected, we also encountered "all natural," "minimally processed" and "no added hormones." Which was best? What was the difference? We didn't know.

We trudged back to the independent grocer and bought a whole chicken, some chicken breasts and a package of turkey tenderloins. These three items (plus a few non-meat purchases) cost us about $50--almost half of our weekly grocery budget. As we soon found out, we might not have gotten what we thought we were getting.

Consciousness, sustainability and humaneness don't come cheap. They don't go on sale. And, most importantly, they can't always be accurately identified by the labels on our foods. Since our shopping trip raised more questions than it answered, I conducted some research of my own into food labeling and was disturbed by what I discovered.

In a nutshell (as defined by the USDA):

Grass-fed - refers to beef that has been fed a grass diet and had access to pasture. However, as a voluntary program, there is no official third-party verification required for this label, which means that cattle could also have been confined to a pen and fed hay for several months out of the year as well as hormones and a steady diet of antibiotics.

Free-range - as applied to chickens means access to the outdoors, which could refer to dirt or gravel as well as pasture. Access isn't a guarantee that they actually roamed outside, and even if they did, the USDA requirement is for a minimal 5 minutes. Again, the label is not a guarantee that the animal was raised without antibiotics or growth enhancers.

Natural - is an unregulated term and simply means that the food is minimally processed: no artificial flavors, colors, chemical preservatives, or other synthetic ingredients (good). However, growing methods, which include antibiotics and growth enhancers for either poultry or livestock, are not reflected in the labeling, so meat bearing this label could have been fed excessive antibiotics (not so good).

Hormones - (man-made) are standard in poultry and livestock production for the purposes of fighting disease or controlling the animal's growth and metabolism. Some hormones, like those given to dairy cows to increase milk production (rBGH, rBST), may lead to more infections that require the use of antibiotics. It's the frequent exposure to the antibiotic residue in milk and other dairy products that have many concerned about long term health effects. (Organic--and some conventionally produced--milk and other dairy products are labeled as rBST or rBGH-free).

Certified Organic - food labels offer perhaps the most assurance. Labeling is regulated by the USDA National Organic Program which strictly prohibits the use of most synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, sewage sludge fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, growth hormones, irradiation, antibiotics, and artificial ingredients. Importantly, organic agriculture is based upon internationally recognized standards that are verifiable.

Clearly food labeling is designed to operate on implication - inference, which industry marketers are betting will work to their advantage. Food is a business like any other and as such it depends upon profit, so it's not surprising that manufacturers use this strategy to better position their products. Not surprising, but still distasteful.

Who suspected that the $5.39/lb. package of turkey tenderloins we bought may differ only slightly from the conventionally packaged meat in the case next to it? When I took a closer look at the labels on the meat we had bought I discovered that, sure enough, the tenderloins were labeled as "Cage Free, 100% natural, no preservatives, no additives."

Was that 5 "cage-free" minutes a day for that turkey, or was hers an idyllic, pastoral existence? Was she drug-free or shot full of growth enhancers and antibiotics like some hen-house junkie before finding her way to our dinner plates? I'll never know, but I'm doubtful that it was as serene and green an existence as the label implies.

The average consumer is likely unaware (as we were) of food labeling loopholes. Seeing natural and no artificial ingredients labels, they believe they're making healthier choices for their family and the environment when they purchase it.

Many of us don't realize the initial investigation required to make truly informed food choices, investigation that is essential in light of recent news that the federal agencies--FSIS, FDA and EPA--charged with ensuring our food safety are failing.

Last month he USDA released it's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) Annual Report, which detailed contamination of the U.S. beef supply with unhealthy and unmonitored levels of residual veterinary drugs, pesticides and heavy metals.

The report revealed that between 2007 and 2008 several slaughtered cattle containing excessive levels of veterinary drugs were turned into food released for sale to the public. Although the drugs involved could result in stomach, nerve or skin problems for consumers, FSIS requested no recall of the tainted meat. (For the full report and its recommendations, go to: http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/24601-08-KC.pdf).

I know at least two things for sure: the more we learn, the less we know and so our food education continues. And my husband and I don't always have to choose the same in order to achieve food harmony in our household.

Since organic meat and produce are more expensive than conventionally produced foods, we like many others at this time, have to pick our food battles. We try and choose wisely. Regarding meat, we buy certified organic, and with grass-fed beef we look for voluntary third party certification, such as from the American Grassfed Association, that attests the beef is "100% grass-fed."

When buying produce, we go organic for lettuce and thin-skinned fruits and vegetables, commercially farmed for food with peel-able skins like onion, avocado, and pineapple. (For a current list of the New Dirty Dozen: 12 Foods to Eat Organic and The Clean 15: Foods You Don't Have To Buy Organic, go to: http://www.thedailygreen.com/healthy-eating/eat-safe/Dirty-Dozen-Foods).

Our next likely step will be to venture beyond the grocery store to locally owned farms that are committed to sustainable, humane practices in raising and slaughtering cattle and poultry. (See http://www.eatwild.com for a directory of farms by state).

With education and commitment, we're finding our common ground on the "what to buy" and learning to creatively navigate the subtler "how to prepare it." Some reasonable compromise helps, but for those times when we're feeling uncompromising, we give ourselves permission to eat what we want. You can almost bet mine will be green.

For the most recent news on recalled ground beef, go to
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=10420034

What's in a (Meat) Label: Is Your Free-Range Chicken Really Roaming Around?
http://cookingresources.suite101.com/article.cfm/whats_in_a_meat_label#ixzz0lnHv2BD1

www.centerforfoodsafety.org/rbgh_hormo.cfm

http://www.americangrassfed.org

http://www.sare.org

http://www.sare.org/coreinfo/whatcanyoudo.htm

http://localfoods.about.com/od/meatpoultry/tp/meatlabels.htm

No Pretense, No Defense

No pretense, no defense. These words popped into my head while driving home after a morning spent with my elderly mother. I'd taken her to a doctor's appointment and to distract her from her anxiety gave her a tour of my new iPod Touch while we waited. She oohd and ahhd with delight as I demonstrated my handy gadget's many capabilities, ones that allowed me to check email and play Solitaire to Joni Mitchell's Blue album while I waited for her.

When the visit was completed, she took my hand as we made a loop around the parking lot for her required post-procedure walk. We chatted about family and friends, her companion's recent eye problem, their travel plans for this summer, the death of another friend. As one topic dovetailed into the next, I found myself in an increasingly familiar role: that of listener, encourager, and supporter.

Just the day before I had been seeking encouragement myself. I've been working with a coach as part of a career change and struggling with some of the concepts we've been discussing. Hearing my frustration, she suggested that I continue but in a different direction. I wasn't convinced a course correction was the answer but by the time I hung up the phone I was doubtful and depressed.

A few hours later, I received a phone call from someone I'd spoken to last month about a volunteer opportunity. We'd been playing phone tag and feeling ambivalent I hadn't returned her last call. Tenaciously, she called again to follow up on the original invitation and to make me a second offer: she needed a co-chair for a committee she heads and had thought of me.

I used my usual "my husband and I are both in transition with work" excuse, implying we might suddenly pack up and move tomorrow, therefore I couldn't possibly do it. However, she was undeterred, so I told her I'd pray about it. She gave me the date and location of the next committee meeting--just in case.

My conscience pricked at me. I just plain didn't want to do it and I felt guilty. I have a free hour or two a month, the meeting location is nearby and it's an opportunity to help others. Still, I was having difficulty rallying myself. Later when talking to my husband about it he asked if my reluctance had to do with commitment. Of course it did, I said. (And a bunch of other stuff, too).

Suddenly I realized that the no pretense, no defense thought was about more than noticing the decline of these traits in my mother; it was an awareness of their subtle, persistent presence in my own life and my desire to be free of them.

It was also an affirmation that a daughter's walk hand-in-hand with her mother around a parking lot could be the highlight of her day. And that pretense and defense can, and do, in some instances rest quietly at bay.

Midlife Midriff

"Oooh," my husband cooed, with eyes wide and an impish grin, his hands on my waist as he pulled me close, "I can pinch a bunch!" His playful exclamation had us both laughing, but I felt a twinge. It'd been quite a while since I'd been able to pinch that elusive inch.

The next day I was back at the gym. My husband's humorous advisory wasn't the real reason (he’s more accepting than I that a woman’s body at 46 isn’t the same as it was at 26), but his comment was a comical reminder of a truth I already knew: it was time to get back to booty boot camp.

Although I'd noticed a slight tip in the scales around 40, I wasn't concerned. I'd always been slim and easily able to drop unwanted pounds by simply cutting back on calories for a few days. However, when I married for the first time a few years later and my eating habits began to mirror those of my husband and step-kids (I inherited two live-in teens), that tip snowballed into a slide. I progressed quickly from a whole foods vegetarian to a pre-packaged foods-eating carnivore with a penchant for sweets.

These were the days of eating for pleasure and for comfort, for satisfaction and for solace. And, whatever it was, eating more of it. Naively unconcerned, I ate onward until one day I sat down and could feel my boobs resting on a fleshy little mantel between my bust line and my belly. I was horrified.

In response I joined a gym. I started with the treadmill, but soon realized I could burn more calories on the elliptical machine. I hired a personal trainer and began a cardio and resistance regimen in earnest, all the while nurturing fantasies of returning to my former figure: abdomen flat instead of protruding, butt cheeks taut instead of rippled, waist 26" instead of . . . (you get the picture). In short, I wanted back the body of my 25-year-old self (or even my 35-year-old self).

I've been in denial. I think that's why my workout routine stalled after about a year. I'd worked myself to muscle stiffness and fatigue, but couldn't break that extra 10 pound barrier no matter how hard I tried. Recently, I acknowledged for the first time the piercing truth that my former body is not coming back. And it's a crushing blow.

I'm not encouraged to discover that for the average woman of 50 to maintain the weight she was at 20, she has to eat between 1/4 to 1/3 fewer calories a day. And, she has to exercise regularly. Why isn't this common knowledge, I wonder? Passed down to us by our mothers or taught to us in school like reading, writing, and arithmetic? Or even advertised on T.V. between the bologna and beer commercials?

Let's face it. Women have more fat than men. It’s an evolutionary hiccup dating back to the prehistoric era when this higher fat ratio gave us the edge against starvation and the ability to continue the species. Men needed more muscle mass for hunting and with all that exercise chasing down dinner, they burned off their extra calories. Sitting around the cave, tending to hearth and home, we were not so fortunate. Although prehistoric starvation is no longer a concern for us women, excess fat still is.

Both men and women are subject to the midlife bulge and declining metabolisms, but aging women are at a disadvantage because we simply have more fat. The equation looks like this: more fat - less muscle = fewer calories burned. Fewer calories burned = more fat. It's a vicious cycle made more vicious by the fact that we have to burn an astonishing 3500 calories to lose one pound of fat, the equivalent of a 12-hour day on the elliptical machine. It makes me want to put my head under a pillow and eat a Twinkie.

Still, the news isn't all bad. The experts tell me that I can attain a reasonable (not ideal) weight and body with proper nutrition and exercise. If I eat a diet of complex carbohydrates (lucky for me I like brown rice), low saturated fat (grilled fish, it’s what’s for dinner!), adequate protein (please pass the beans) and high fiber (I think I bran, I think I bran), I’m on my way. But diet is only half the solution.

It turns out the 30 minutes I spent red-faced and exhausted on the elliptical machine, endurance draining from me like sweat from my pores, may have been better spent walking briskly or running. I was on the right track, however, with alternating days of weight resistance training to build my muscle, which in addition to increasing physical strength, comes with the added bonus of burning 50 extra calories a day for each pound of muscle. (For those counting, that's 50 down, 3450 to go).

Other helpful tips I gleaned for moving from youthful self-indulgence toward mindful mid-life eater: no more cooking our way through every kitchen gadget we received as a wedding gift (bye-bye bountiful bread maker), no after-dinner snack trips to the kitchen (farewell, beloved Honey Baked Backyard BBQ potato chips), no eating in front of the T.V. (arrivederci NCIS crew, we’ll be eating dinner without you), no high starch vegetables (au revoir potato, corn and peas), and no more cuddling in the recliner instead of going to the gym (sayonara to “Oh, sweeeetie, you’re heavvvvy.”).

It's tough to swallow the idea that no matter how much I exercise, it won't be enough to lose or maintain my weight without a more restrictive diet. I have to eat less. Period. Maybe the quantity issue will be helped by the final recommendation that instead of one or two big meals a day, fewer, smaller meals with some healthy snacks can make less seem like more.

Most of all, I get that redefining weight maintenance and success at this stage of life is imperative. Even if I were to get back to my pre-marriage, pre-midlife weight, the likelihood is slim that I'd be fully satisfied with my figure or the fit of my clothing. With age, even if weight doesn't change, apparently fat distribution does.

So, I end with this note to myself: you're in a new phase of your life now. Get over it, love the body you’re in, pick up your salad fork and your gym shoes and power-walk on.

for more information visit: http://partnership.hs.columbia.edu/klauer.html or www.newsweek.com/id/44119

Slumber Partings

It'd been awhile since I'd experienced a run of sleep deprivation, but here it was again. There was no crying baby. No late night work deadline. No noisy next door garage band. The reason may be less talked about but is arguably more common than most realize.

My husband is a night owl and I'm more of a lark--earlier to bed, earlier to rise. It's common for him to stay up until 1 or 2 a.m. and if I'm sleeping lightly, for me to awaken when he comes to bed. He's told me that my snoring has at times kept him awake and that on occasion he can hear me from down the hall. He has an animated demonstration he likes to perform to show me what I look and sound like. (It's sort of a cross between a snorting pig and a braying donkey. His snoring, although loud, is less comical).

When we first married 3 years ago, two of my husband's three teenagers took up residence with us in a 3 bedroom house. In addition to the usual adjustments of newly-marrieds, we had co-parenting, frequent overnight work travel, and differing personal rhythms to navigate. Many nights we were awake more than asleep and chronic tiredness and irritability became the norm. This lasted the first six months of our marriage.

On the infrequent occasions when one of the kids spent the night away, we sought respite by sleeping apart. However, expectations fed my disappointment that my husband and I weren't sleeping well together. I brooded, wondering what was wrong with us. I soon discovered that we're not unique and that sleep, like anything else, changes and evolves.

One day during the early months of my marriage I was meeting with a client out of town. She'd observed my embarrassing inability to stifle repeated yawns, which led to a conversation on spousal snoring. She told me that her husband had suffered from undiagnosed sleep apnea for many years of their marriage, which until properly treated, had led to sleeplessness and separate beds.

At the height of my sleep trials I remember talking with a girlfriend whose husband's snoring was so bad that she'd spent almost a year sleeping in their spare bedroom. She told me she'd started wearing earplugs with good results and sent me some for my birthday. I began inserting the little foam silencers before bed and, combined with the white noise of a small fan tucked under some pillows in the corner of our bedroom, sleep improved.

Not long ago I was talking with another friend, a young newlywed undergoing chemotherapy for testicular cancer, who shared with some resignation that his wife sleeps in the spare room on the days he undergoes treatment because his restlessness and frequent need to use the bathroom make a sound night's sleep impossible for either of them. I felt for him. The situation is not the one they'd imagined.

Nor is it for scores of other couples. According to a National Sleep Foundation poll, a whopping 70% of us report we experience frequent sleep problems. For those of us who are partnered, the most frequent complaints are restless sleepers (1/3) and snorers (2/3). Not surprisingly, the consequences include those that my husband and I experienced early in our marriage: excessive daytime lethargy, reduced quality of life and strained relationships (more than 1/3 of us on this last count, says the study).

While snoring, sleep apnea, and some types of restlessness are medical problems that can be treated, the other "that just annoys me" habits are perhaps more challenging to remedy. Studies have found that almost any difference can create a problem:

Disagreement about who sleeps on which side of the bed, mattress firmness, mattress size, sleeping with children or pets--or not sleeping with them, bed time/rising time, alarms, room temperature, sheet texture, number of pillows, to cuddle or not to cuddle, differing sleep positions, room quietness, open windows/closed windows, nightmares, number of blankets, going to bed angry, trips to the bathroom, ad infinitum. It's a wonder any of us sleeps with another.

As a natural response, many make the kinds of sleep accommodations that my husband and I have made. In addition to earplugs and separate beds, some also alter their own sleep schedules, use eye masks, or settle for a couch in the hope of getting uninterrupted shut-eye. I would add to the list: altered expectations (especially for those of us who partner later in life when sleep habits are well formed) and acceptance.

Research has found that when couples first start sleeping together, there's a greater willingness to sacrifice comfort for closeness. After a while, many not only want--but must--get a good night's sleep in order to function well. While some can get by with as little as 5 hours, and others require double digits, most of us need on average between 7 and 8 hours of sleep a night. It works best if those hours aren't fitful.

Case in point: I can go a couple of days with less than my needed rest. I may feel less energetic, but I can function. By day three, I'm cranky and overly-sensitive. By day four, watch out! I'm ready for a roaring meltdown. Fortunately, those days are fewer and farther between as my husband and I have come to know our sleep needs and limits.

Compromise, adjustment and acceptance have carried us far in achieving a better night's sleep together. But for those times, like this past week, when either of us reaches those limits, we now have a spare bedroom to which one of us can retreat.

What has been your experience?

The National Sleep Foundation poll results and a self-diagnostic quiz can be found at: www.sleepfoundation.org
For additional information visit: http://health.nih.gov/topic/SleepDisorders

Passages

in loving memory ~ G-Man George Willits

I live in a valley between two prominent peaks. To the east lies a volcanic national park, to the north a majestic Matterhorn-like mecca for climbers, skiers and boarders. Yesterday a search and rescue helicopter recovered the body of a 26-year-old climber who succumbed to altitude sickness near the top of the 14,000 foot peak while out for a Saturday climb with his buddy.

These days, death has been visiting closer to home. In January, my husband's younger brother died, followed two weeks later by a longtime family friend. An aunt and cousin both succumbed to illness last November, and a few months before that a friend's husband died from a prescription pill overdose.

As with the climber, most of these passings were sudden and unexpected. Even with the ones that were imminent, we hadn't met them with a real readiness to say so long. Now, with another friend living with terminal cancer, we've been given the opportunity to say fare-thee-well and to do it openly. To do it differently.

Our friend George got the idea for a passages meeting when another friend had read him some excerpts from a book by Jungian psychologist Robert Johnson. He liked the idea of a gathering of his friends sharing inspirational passages on the topic of death and the afterlife. His one requirement was that the evening not turn into a living memorial for him. He wanted to look ahead, not back.

To honor his request, sixteen of us met with him in the home of one of our group. Some chose not to read but simply to share about their own near death encounter and what they experienced momentarily on the other side of this physical life; some shared a funny anecdote of adventures they'd had with George and (violating the no living memorial rule) what he has meant to them.

Of those who did read, several read from Jung's protegees, a couple from the works of Emmanuel. A writer friend shared a poem he'd written specially for the occasion [which he chose instead of the guitar he'd brought to perform Amazing Grace]. Another had memorized a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, our host read On Death from The Prophet and I, I read The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. My thought was that being able to look back with peace on a life well lived is equally as important as looking toward what awaits.

As a multiple cancer survivor over many years, our friend is the embodiment of someone who has taken a road less travelled. Left without a normal voice as the result of an earlier throat cancer, he's been able to produce gurgled-sounding speech by applying finger pressure over a bandage-covered hole in his throat where his larynx once was. As I listened to our friends recount their adventures with George, I felt affirmed in my choice of the Frost poem. Two memories in particular stood out.

The first occurred when many of us were taking up kayaking. Not to be left out, George decided he was going to kayak right along with the rest of us. Although some thought he was insane for taking such a risk (not uncommon to flip over and end up under water), he bought a kayak and outfitted it with pontoons for greater stability. With his modified vessel, he spent many hours with friends out on the water, enjoying an activity that he deeply loved.

The second was a camping trip George and some of the guys had taken years before. Several of them were contemplating a swim, but the chill of the morning hadn't quite worn off yet and the water was uninvitingly cold. While they hesitated, George put his hand over his throat, ran past them and dove into the frigid water. When he popped up, the rest looked on sheepishly with mouths agape.

To know that we're living fully in the moment, where fear and risk are present, but kept in their proper perspective with faith is a wondrous gift. Perhaps this is all we need at the hour of our last farewell--to know that we lived as fully as we could in any given moment, in spite of fear, in spite of risk. I see this in the full, unimpeded life our friend has lived.

And I hope this was so for the young climber who gave his life in pursuit of his passion. His mother's comment to news cameras that she understood why her son loved it up there, why he chose to climb mountains, struck me.

For just that moment it wasn't about her loss, but about her son's life, about living.