Tag archives: loss
On a lark, Michael and Gabriella Salsbury walked into Madame Rosinka’s fortune-telling shopfront on Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara. Rudderless and adrift on the open ocean of unspeakable parental sorrow, the couple were emphatically not looking to Madame Rosinka for the answers that had otherwise so eluded them. The Salsburys were not seekers after the […]
As Winter gives way to Spring, I find myself pondering life’s various transitions. Never more so than this week, while in Mammoth with my teenagers for our annual pilgrimage to the snow. For the first time, my 13-year-old daughter left our rented condo on her own to meet a friend on the mountain. Happy, confident, […]
We have it on good Biblical authority that Humanity’s whole story started with having Paradise, and then losing it. Of course, nobody ever died in Paradise – but since then, everybody has. One of my favorite poets is A.E. Housman. And I particularly like this four-line epitaph he wrote, honoring some of the British volunteers […]
Home Within, the audio-visual collaborative performance piece from Syrian composer-clarinetist Kinan Azmeh and Syrian-Armenian visual artist Kevork Mourad, was originally conceived of as an emotions-into-art response to the loss and longing of the Syrian conflict that has claimed more than 100,000 lives and sent about one-third of the Syrian people into exile. It grew out […]
A Lesson in Loss It’s important to tell those we love how much they mean to us – don’t wait. It was another death along the train tracks in Montecito as we waited anxiously for further details and circumstances. Then we heard it was a local hair stylist. That was upsetting. And then the unfathomable […]
In the Times of Dis-Ease I am generally described as a cheerful person who tends toward optimism. But lately I find myself lingering over any mention of grief or fear or loss. Rather than turning away and protecting myself… I find that I am, in the face of this pandemic, turning toward the dark, unpleasant […]
One of the most common themes of all songs and poetry is the loss of love. Usually, it is the loser who is speaking or singing. And more often than not, the love he or she thought they had, has been transferred to somebody else. Statistics are lacking, but I would venture to guess that […]
