Death on The Huffington Post

David Segal: Rhode Island to Buck National Organization for Marriage, Override Veto of Domestic Partner Death Rights

2010-01-04T15:26:31Z

In November, Rhode Island Governor Donald Carcieri made a move that surprised even his harshest critics -- my membership dues to that club being current -- by vetoing legislation that would have permitted domestic partners to claim each others' remains and plan each others' funerals.

State Senator Rhoda Perry and I sponsored the bill at the behest of our constituent, Mark Goldberg, whose partner's body went unclaimed for nearly a month in late 2008. (It's not gratuitous to mention that Goldberg's partner of 17 years had claimed his own life, for it makes clear just how flagrantly unconscionable were Carcieri's actions.)

As of Tuesday afternoon's veto override session, the law will stand in spite of the Governor's intransigence.

The legislation was construed to apply equally to gay and straight couples, quite possibly affecting more of the latter. But the governor saw it as yet another poisoned barb in gay rights activists' bottomless quiver, asserting that "this bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage."

Perhaps he was bolstered by the overturning of marriage equality in Maine just days before the veto. Were Rhode Islanders more fundamentalist in their Catholicism -- RI is the nation's most Catholic state -- it might have played well to the very conservative Republican's conservative base, if he still has one. But with a majority or near majority of Rhode Islanders supporting gay marriage, and with only one member of the legislature voting against the measure -- and therefore with dozens of opponents of marriage equality voting in favor of it -- the maneuver amounted to a self-inflicted gubernatorial face-plant.

The backlash was swift and sharp: When pressed on the matter, even the chair of the state GOP declined to support Carcieri. The governor's been quick to make the rounds on cable news in support of his anti-immigrant agenda or his fiscal austerity measures, but it wasn't until the revelation of his fear of the "gay death-style" that his mug landed on the Colbert Report.

So too has the National Organization for Marriage weighed in, accusing Goldberg of playing patsy to the cynical gay rights movement -- or even worse, knowingly exploiting his partner's tragic passing:

Rather than being compassionate, the legislation in question is actually an exploitation of Mr. Goldberg's tragedy by the homosexual-marriage activists in Rhode Island. Despite their claims to the contrary, these bills serve simply as "Trojan Horses" for homosexual-marriage.

Even if Carcieri is against the measure in his frigid heart of hearts, the move was politically asinine. His veto will help the marriage equality effort far more than would have the alternatives, like letting the bill become law without his signature. It provides a stark signal for anyone who's still undecided about gay marriage: "I know I'm not on the same side as those cranks who wanted people to jump through hoops to claim the remains of their loved ones."

For that reason, NOM's revolting stand on this issue should be broadcast far and wide, wherever they work in opposition to gay marriage. The group's radically anti-gay agenda cuts much deeper than opposition to marriage equality: In this instance NOM has demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice the well-being of straight couples, just so gays don't achieve a meager increment of headway alongside them. I suppose every war has its collateral damage.

Robert Lanza, M.D.: Does Death Exist?: Life Is Forever, Says Theory

2010-01-04T12:48:00Z

In the cartoon, Bugs Bunny swallows nitroglycerine and gunpowder, and springs back to life even when he gets flattened by a boulder. But it's not just Bugs. Experiments suggest that life can't be destroyed either.

As discussed in Part I, the 'many-worlds' interpretation of quantum physics states that there are an infinite number of universes (the 'multiverse'). Everything that can possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death doesn't exist in any real sense in these scenarios since all of them exist simultaneously regardless of what happens in any of them. The 'Who am I?' feeling is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn't go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can't be created or destroyed.

Scientists think they can say where life begins and ends. We generally reject the multiple universes of Star Trek as fiction, but it turns out there is more than a morsel of scientific truth in this popular genre. According to Biocentrism, space and time aren't the hard objects we think, but rather tools our mind uses to put everything together. When bodies die, they do so not in the random billiard-ball matrix but in the inescapable-life matrix.

Consider all the days that have passed since the beginning of time. Now stack them like chairs, and seat yourself on the very top. Isn't it amazing that you just happen to be here now, perched seemingly by chance on the cutting edge of infinity? Science claims it's a big accident, a one-in-a-gazillion chance. But the mathematical possibility of being on top of infinity -- of your consciousness ending -- is zero.

Imagine existence like a recording. Depending on where the needle is placed you hear a certain song. This is the present; the music, before and after is the past and future. Likewise, every moment endures always. All songs exist simultaneously, although we only experience them piece by piece.

Why are the laws of nature exactly balanced for life to exist? There are over 200 parameters in the universe so exact that it strains credulity to propose they are random. These fundamental constants (like gravity) all seem to be carefully chosen, often with great precision, to allow for existence of life. Tweak any of them and you never existed. Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg agrees this fine-tuning is "far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident."

Consider, too, everything else that had to happen for us to be here. There are trillions of events, such as the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs -- what if its trajectory had been slightly different? The odds are astronomically against everything happening exactly right. Is it just dumb luck?

Being here is no accident. Perhaps Biocentrism is right -- the past is simply the spatio-temporal logic of the observer. If the present determines the past as Stephen Hawking and others suggest, then it couldn't be any other way. In fact, scientists recently published a landmark experiment in Science showing that flipping a switch could retroactively change an event that had already happened in the past.

When I bought my house it was run down. My friend Dennis helped me fix it. He's one of nine children who grew up in a housing project and became a firefighter. When a car went through the ice on the pond, he dove in and pulled a man out of the submerged car. A few years ago he cut a limb off a tall tree. "We're supposed to be having fun," I said. "I don't want to spend the night in the emergency room." We laughed. A few seconds later the massive branch started to swing and bashed into his head like a ramming-rod. "Dennis!" I yelled as he tumbled through the air. But the only response was a terrifying thump when his body hit the ground.

There my best friend was draped over the branch like a rag doll. He had no pulse and wasn't breathing. He was air-lifted to the hospital. While the alarms were going off on Dennis' monitors, a nurse called the ICU and pleaded, "We have more LifeFlights on the way and can't handle him here." The problem was they couldn't get housekeeping to change the sheets on the empty ICU bed.

Dennis laid in the corner teetering on the edge of life and death. When I told his family the doctors didn't know if he was going to make it, his 13-year-old son started to sob. It all seemed surreal. As when my sister died, I thought about the 20-watts of energy, and about experiments showing a single particle can pass through two holes at the same time. I knew Dennis was both alive and dead, outside of time.

When you lose a loved one, you can't imagine a happy ending. But consider: you and I, indeed the entire human species could have been wiped out like the Neanderthals a hundred times over. Whether it's flipping the switch in the Science experiment or falling out a tree, it's the 20-watts of energy that will experience the result in the multiverse. But by definition, you can't experience nonexistence (you'll always seem to be alive, now, on top of time).

After Bugs gets blown up, there's a moment when you think he's dead. But the show always continues. Likewise, according to Biocentrism, consciousness can't be extinguished in a timeless, spaceless world. That's why you're here despite the preposterous odds against it. Bottom line: you may get flattened now and then, but life can't be stamped out.

Last year, Dennis' son scored a touchdown at the football game. Dennis and the other parents went wild.

Remember, the silly rabbit never dies.

Robert Lanza, MD is author of over two dozen scientific books, including "Biocentrism," a new book that lays out his theory of everything.

Darryle Pollack: Beyond The Bucket List

2009-12-31T13:21:52Z

The Bucket List is already way beyond the movie; it's part of the lexicon, part of life----the things you want to do before you die.

Lately it seems as if everyone and his dog has one. Which is great. Up to a point.

There's a place where the Buck(et) Stops. Where the brave and bold move beyond.

For me, the moment hit somewhere between imagining getting a face-lift and getting my affairs in order. Not that I've done either one.

For baby boomers, the dawn of the new decade could be the perfect time.
It's not about age; it's about attitude.

You are ready to move Beyond the Bucket List when:

The bucket is in sight---and you have insight.

You don't have it ALL; but you have ENOUGH.

You are thinking ahead---and behind.

You want to GO---and also LET GO.

So go with it. Create a list that's the flip side of the Bucket List.
I couldn't avoid the obvious----so call it: The F**k-it List.

Things you shoulda done, woulda done, coulda done---but know you won't.
Things you are ready to cross off your Bucket List---with or without regret.

Since I'm making up the concept, I'm also making up the rules:

Be honest. Be sure you have searched your soul and are ready to give something up.

Be flexible---there's no particular number of items. As you get older your Bucket List will get shorter; your F**k-it list will get longer.

Be real. Pick things you had some legitimate possibility of accomplishing. In my case, it's not likely that I'd win a Nobel Prize----but in my fantasies, it's possible I could sing onstage with Bruce Springsteen.

The most important feature is that you are not GIVING UP; you are GIVING permission; GIVING acceptance to the person who counts most---yourself.

It's an easy way to assess where you are at this point in your life. Plus I promise a sense of relief and release comes from letting yourself off the hook. Permanently. Publicly.

So here goes:

MY F**K-IT LIST:

Get an advanced degree
Travel in space
Fit into the clothes from my past lives
Run a marathon
Climb a mountain
Have a completely clutter free house or a completely clean desk
Walk through an art museum and be able to appreciate everything
Learn what's under the hood of a car
Throw a delicious meal together from random ingredients in the refrigerator

To launch this concept as a meme, I'm posting my list on Facebook and tagging friends; I hope you'll post your own F**k-it List and pass it forward.

My list would have one extra item but it still feels premature----until the Boss stops performing, I'm hanging onto that remote chance I'll get to sing with his band.

Elissa Stein: How We Talk About Death

2009-12-28T14:52:00Z

Yesterday, while walking down Christopher Street, I got a call. A kidney was available for my brother who had recently been placed on the transplant list. A friend of a friend of a cousin of ours had an aneurysm and her family generously offered her kidney to someone in need. From that moment on there was a nonstop flurry of phone calls, of questions, of concerns. We were nervous, excited, hopeful, scared--plunged in that moment into the unknown. Waiting. Waiting for answers, for experts, for affirmation of a positive match, for the family of the donor's final decision to pull the plug.

It hit me. Amidst the confusion, the swirling emotions, the planning and conferring, how appalling those words are. Pull the plug. I'd casually used that expression many times, never thinking beyond the phrase to the reality of what it meant to the the family who had that decision to make. Or of the person who lay there, a body without a mind, who's very being was in the hands of others. This woman was a daughter, a friend, perhaps a wife and mother, perhaps a grandmother, aunt, cousin. Her life had abruptly changed, her loved ones had been plunged unexpectedly into despair. And still, within that grief and pain, they were giving hope and life to others. This woman, this saviour was not a vacuum or a toaster. That's when you pull a plug. By referring to such a monumental moment with such dismissive words, the enormity of it was shunted off to the side.

Language has a power that's so often underestimated--words and phrases shape how we think and feel. Expressions that we use on a regular basis create a collective mindset that all too often minimizes the reality of a situation. Think about how the word "soldier" was replaced in the media with "troop" in the not too distant past. To me, a soldier is a man or woman in uniform. There's a face, a body, a person, while "troop" is detached, a word with no humanity. It's far easier to hear that we lost 35 troops in Iraq than 35 soldiers died that day. Someone in a position of power decided to re-work our societal vocabulary. People were dying. How could the immediacy and sting be taken away? Call it something else.

We hide behind words because the reality can be too painful. We try to soften the edges with euphemisms or oblique references. I will never say "pull the plug" again. Ending life support is a decision fraught with bravery and grief. It deserves to be acknowledged for what it is.

Allison Gilbert: Parentless Parents: Using The Holidays To Keep The Memory Of Your Parents Alive -- Part 2

2009-12-23T15:10:00Z

Last week, I wrote about one of the best ways to keep the memory of your parents alive during the holidays. It's simple and doesn't cost a penny. All you have to do is make a conscious decision to slow down long enough -- not so easy this time of year, I admit -- to simply talk with your children about the grandparents they no longer have in their lives. Conversations are invaluable and have the additional advantage of being super easy. They can happen anywhere -- in the car or at the mall.

But there are other ways to accomplish the same goal. In the Parentless Parents survey, which is part of the research I am conducting for my forthcoming book, Parentless Parents: How the Deaths of Our Mothers and Fathers Impact the Way We Parent Our Own Children, respondents have impressed me with some of the creative strategies they use. Here's a sampling:

"My mother sewed and I make ornaments out of the old wooden spools of thread that were left over in her sewing basket."

"My dad was a HUGE Big Band fan and I will play 'his' music in the house."

"I have a couple of recipes I prepare that were my mother's - everyone knows they were her recipes - even though they never knew my mother."

"We give gifts to the kids and ask them to consider it from one of their grandparents because we know it's something they would have bought them."

And there's an added benefit to all this holiday memory sharing. If you're honest with your children about your feelings of loss, they may just surprise you with the most meaningful gift you'll likely receive - your very own child not just thinking about the presents she wants, but rather the kind of support she can give. One mom writes in the survey about the first Christmas she ever spent without her mom: "My oldest daughter bought me a Whitman's sampler, which my mother had given me every year for as long as I could remember. We laughed and joked and remembered special times with her. We were able to make new memories without forgetting the past."

Christmas is here. It's no longer "around the corner." Now is the time. How will you use the next few days -- the next few hours -- to keep the memory of your parents alive? Let me know in the comment section below. You can also join the discussion by taking the Parentless Parents survey. I'll use your anonymous responses in my book.

***

Allison Gilbert is currently writing her third non-fiction book, Parentless Parents: How the Deaths of Our Mothers and Fathers Impact the Way We Parent Our Own Children. If you are a parent who has lost both your parents, you can help with her research by taking the Parentless Parents online survey. You can also join the "Parentless Parents" community on Facebook.

Parentless Parents will be published by Hyperion and is a follow-up to her critically acclaimed book, Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents. Parentless Parents will explore how the way we parent is shaped by the loss of our own mothers and fathers; how marriages are impacted when one spouse is parentless and the other is not; and offer strategies for keeping the memory of our parents alive for our children.

In Always Too Soon, Ms. Gilbert (a producer at CNN in New York and mother of two children) interviewed celebrities and others about losing their parents. She spoke with, among others, Rosanne Cash, Geraldine Ferraro, Ice-T, Yogi Berra, Mariel Hemingway, and New York Times best-selling authors, Hope Edelman and Barbara Ehrenreich. Always Too Soon sparked the formation of the Parentless Parents organization, a national network of support groups for mothers and fathers who have lost their own parents. You can find out more about Ms. Gilbert by visiting her website at www.allisongilbert.com.

Yazmany Arboleda: Let Me Down Easy

2009-12-23T12:08:37Z

For the past three decades, Anna Deavere Smith has always performed barefoot - while at the same time walking in the well worn crocs of doctors, or trading them in for the stilettos of super models without breaking her stride. She has lived in the dying bodies of cancer-patients, solemnly donned the cassock of a priest, and inhabited an inmate who had lost any hope of salvation. She believes that words dress the soul. Regardless of their age, gender, race, or profession, she has taken the words of countless real-life characters and, like an amplifier, has magnified and articulated their most inner thoughts and feelings to theater-goers around the country. As a student of life, she has traveled across the U.S. and beyond, using theater as a tool to "meet people and explore ideas." An award-winning playwright and actor, she creates ground-breaking performances that blur the line between theater and journalism, using voice-recordings from real-life encounters to create gripping portraits. In her latest one woman show, Let Me Down Easy, now in its final weeks at the Second Stage Theater on Broadway, she explores ideas about the human body, its resilience and its vulnerability. At a time of debate around "death panels", Ms. Smith brings to life a rich, diverse range of perspectives on how we live and die in America today.

After watching Ms. Smith perform at the TED conference a few years ago and again at the Second Stage Theater at the end of November, I was eager to find out more about her career, her latest work, and her thoughts on the President's health care reform agenda. I met with her on a brisk New York winter day. I walked out of the elevator of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel into their 35th floor lounge to find Ms. Smith, elegantly dressed in a deep purple velvet dress, under a cream colored blazer. Sitting there, unaware I had arrived, I saw her framed against a beautiful view of Central Park West. Graceful, soft-spoken and serene, to see her out of character nonchalantly sitting in the middle of a restaurant was as evocative as seeing her live on stage where her electric performances keep her audience emotionally engaged from beginning to end.

Pulling out my tape recorder, I was immediately aware of how ordinary the act must be for her. Jokingly, I asked if she had any advice on the use of the recorder. She told me it was always best to use the old fashioned micro-cassette versions. Ms Smith confessed that, after following the counsel of her good friend Samantha Power and traveling to Rwanda to conduct interviews, ten years after the genocide, when she was first beginning her research for Let Me Down Easy, it was the use of a digital device that led to her losing some of the interviews that she had recorded there. The data could not be recovered, and she could not help but imagine that if by chance "some indiscretion (as per Tiger Woods) was included in said files, they would probably have been miraculously found."

Ms. Smith believes that we all speak in organic poems. Her performances, curated monologues, are culled verbatim, syllable for syllable, breath for breath, from the thousands of interviews that she has conducted in the past twenty some odd years. I wanted to pay a similar tribute to her art.

YA: I am intrigued by life's trajectory, the gap between where one aims and where the dart actually lands. One of the things I like to ask when meeting someone for the first time is: "What did you want to be when you grow up?"

ADS: Hmm, well, I actually wanted to be a psychiatrist, but I went to see West Side Story and I couldn't stop crying. My mother said, 'That's it! you are too sensitive you can't be a psychiatrist.' And, you know, I think that stuck in my head, and then, little did she know that what I would do is something that requires me to ultimately be more empathic than a psychiatrist, because I can't really sit back, and, interpret what people do as pathology, and I just interpret what they do as, as their mythology...

YA: How much do you hold back when you are interviewing someone?

ADS: Hmm, I don't know, I think it's probably very fluid you know... but I don't ask very many questions. In the case of this project, a lot of times the question was as simple as 'What happened?' You know, it's not in this version of the play, but I did a lot of interviews while I was doing research for this play in Rwanda ten years after the genocide, so that's an example of where all I had to say was 'what happened?' to the Tutsis, and with the few Hutus that I interviewed, it was "what were you accused of?" or "what did you do?" and then people often told me. That was one of the appealing things to me about this project is that people, were, eager to--in whatever venue, whether it was a hospital or in that case Rwanda, people were eager to--talk, and my overall work, is called "On the road, a search of the American character" and I have been doing that overall work for, since, the end of the seventies, through this one. Yeah, this play is a, a, this play is one in that long series. And my objective is to get people to talk about whatever they want to talk about and I'm, I'm really a student of language and linguistic habits..

YA: Phonetics?

ADS: Well, habits. Habits and how people break habits. How nobody talks like anybody else, that's my interest. You know, I mentioned as a child I wanted to be a psychiatrist, but then what I ended up studying, I didn't come to the theater until I was much older --I was already out of college and everything -- but what I studied was languages and so, of course, then I thought I might be a linguist. So that's really my attraction and probably what keeps me in the theater. I see myself as not a typical theater person, but a person who uses the theater as a place to meet people and explore ideas.

YA: At the TED conference in 2005, you spoke of Ms. Young Sun Han, a Korean Shopkeeper, about her feelings in regards to the Los Angeles race riot of 1992. She had shared with you her discontent towards African-Americans and what had happened then. As an African American person, how did you manage to get such honesty from her when you interviewed her?

ADS: Well, there are two things going on there. One is that, to make that play I interviewed over 300 people, to make this play I interviewed over 300 people and in that play, you know, again, my objective was to get people to talk, so, the riot, it really shook this country to its core. And the people in LA were really a wreck by the time I arrived there with my tape recorder so all kinds of people spoke openly to me, the chief of police who was the most unpopular person, Daryl Gates met with me twice, why would he meet with me? African American. Woman. Liberal. From New York. Reginald Denny met with me. One of the jurors from the first trial where the officers walked, white, you know, they were all white jurors, met with me, wept. People were so shaken up that they wanted to talk. That's one of 'em, so, and that's also the kind of place where I want to go with my tape recorder, again, where people are ripe to be talking.

But the other thing that happened with with Mrs. Young Sun Han, was that soon after I arrived in LA, I got a -- I know it was soon because it was before I got an apartment I was living in a hotel -- I got a a phone call and I don't know how these kids got my hotel -- I don't know but I got this phone call and in my hotel room saying that they heard what I was doing they were masters degree students at UCLA. Korean American. And they said we heard what you are doing, and, we think you are gonna to get it wrong. And so I was like 'Oh my God.' I mean you know identity politics, I thought, this is awful. And then there was a pause, and they said: so we wanna help you. And they hooked up with me and they took me all over the place, introduced me to their community, they were the complete buffer, they translated, they took me to their churches, their parents took me out to meals, they were unbelievable and they, two of those young Korean American girls were sitting at the coffee table, on the floor with me and Mrs. Young Sun Han. Yeah, sure, I can credit myself, but it's really them. If those two women wouldn't have been there, I don't think she would have let me into her home and it was really just a beautiful moment, with a woman of an older generation and these young girls telling me what had happened.

YA: Let's talk about something very present on many people's minds right now. Do you think the current administration is trying to Let Us Down Easy? What are your thoughts about the current health care bill? Is it better to pass an imperfect bill or no bill at all?

ADS: We have to have something. The problem with the current situation is that it is all cluttered by politics. The way things are going now, the system can't sustain itself. The problem is that in Washington they really have an upside down idea about [health] care on every level. I think that at this point we have to have something. Something to build upon. [the imperfection of the bill] will force other entities outside of government to be creative and fill in the holes.

YA: What do you consider your greatest achievement?

ADS: Ha. Let me think, I mean I could be flip and say learning to skip rope, I could consider that an achievement.

YA: I read that you make your drama students at NYU skip rope for twenty minutes at the beginning of every class.

ADS: Make them? They don't jump for that long. Fifteen. Ten sometimes. But you know the thing is, universities are in a way a very very critically important place to study art and performance, but they are also a weird place. And I find, and I have been teaching since 1973, you have to get people out of that mind-set of being so smart and not wanting to appear silly and not willing to appear in any way foolish. You have to get everyone start from the same place. You are not going to get what I have to give if you come in with a particular mindset. So the jumping is part of getting all of the students at the same level. They are all out of breath and start from the same footing. Change the expectations.

YA: What has been your biggest challenge during the creation of your work?

ADS: What was really interesting to me from the beginning was understanding the human body. The resilience of the human body on the one hand, the vulnerability on the other, and the inevitable. Knowing that we don't live forever. And so my friend Samantha Power said to me, you are dealing with the body you have to go to Rwanda. And going to Rwanda really changed everything. All of the expectations that I had of this project were no longer the same after all of the conversations that happened there.

Actually, being taken for example to a place where we looked at several corpses, rooms and rooms full of corpses. This really brought me to a place where I better understood the vulnerability that I was going to have to face. Death became a very real thing in my mind at that point. This experience affected the way that I interviewed and understood all of the people that I would meet in the years to follow.

YA: What was your ultimate goal with this project?

ADS: I think that for me, the one thing that I wanted to accomplish was to create something that is beautiful. I wanted it to be beautiful. The people that I was interviewing were people that were often caught in the throes of something that is potentially disturbing. Something that could be perceived as negative or distressful. And the way I see it, art is linked to hope. Artists are the people that no matter what, pick up the pen, pick up a paintbrush. They take the time to translate what is happening to create something that resonates deeply with the rest of the people that are caught in the middle of their own reality.

Danny Groner: Brittany Murphy Was Recent Subject of Controversy

2009-12-20T14:40:30Z

The Hollywood community is stunned today by news of the death of actress Brittany Murphy. Murphy, 32, was best-known for her roles in Clueless, 8 Mile, and most recently, Sin City. (TMZ was the first to report the death, with Wikipedians hard at work searching for a more reliable site to credit before posting it as truth.)

If the rumors turn out to be true, there's bound to be speculation about the cause of Murphy's death. Initial reports cite cardiac arrest, the same cause that was attributed to Michael Jackson's death this summer. Murphy made headlines earlier this month when her husband had a brief health scare that led him to the hospital. And she reportedly parted ways on bad terms from production of the upcoming movie The Caller. See Saturday Night Live's spoof of Murphy below:

Earlier in her career, Murphy was accused of having an eating disorder which some believed was tied to a cocaine habit. In 2005 she denied the allegations, saying:

"Wow. No, just for the record I have never tried it in my entire life, I've never even seen it, and I don't leave the house too much, except to go to work," she said. "My worst vice is caffeine. [The rumor is] really pretty darn far-fetched -- it couldn't be further from the truth. I have known people over the course of my life that have bad problems with drugs, and it's something really serious."

Update: At 3:25 p.m., Wikipedia added the death to Brittany Murphy's page. It has the Chicago Tribune as the source.

Update: At 9 p.m., SNL pulled the clip from Hulu.com.

Sarah, Duchess of York: Celebrating The Young Victoria

2009-12-17T08:27:43Z

I married Her Majesty the Queen's best looking son. I agreed to become a naval wife. Two weeks after we were married, we were separated; he went to sea, and I went to the second floor apartment at Buckingham Palace. I was so sad without him. I saw him for 40 days for the first five years of our marriage. I was broken hearted. I missed him beyond words, beyond the description in these writings. I needed my man.

So I immersed myself into the life of Victoria and Albert.

I started by a visit to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. It was the happiest of their homes, where their nine children would act out charades for their parents, and tend the vegetable gardens for the royal table once a month. I became fascinated by the love story of Victoria and Albert. Maybe because my own great love -- my Andrew -- was not at home. But whatever it took I would study with vigour the love story of these two incredible people. Benita Stoney and I worked tirelessly to bring the book to life. Eventually, George Wiedenfeld published it at Osborne House, followed shortly afterwards by The Travels of Queen Victoria and Albert through Europe.

The world had to know of this, the greatest untold love story in history. It had to be made into a movie for Hollywood. The world had to know The Young Victoria.

The black-clad, diminutive figure who suffered racking headaches, and who had a tempestuously volatile temper, was simply not the beautiful, magical young woman who ran down the hills of Coburg with no shoes collecting wild flowers for her hair.

And why do we remember Victoria as always in black? Is it because she lost her greatest love after only 21 years of marriage? Victoria lost her best friend, her lover, her father, her husband, her mentor and her guardian angel. When he died Victoria wrote in her diary that she had lost half her soul and half her body.

When I wrote the book Victoria and Albert: Life at Osbourne House in 1991, extracts from Victoria's diary hugely inspired my idea that this great love story had to become a movie.

Albert died on 14 December 1861, and Victoria reluctantly left Windsor to return to Osbourne where -- on the bitter, desolate January of 1862, three weeks after Albert's death -- she wrote:

"Can I -- can I be alive when half my body and soul are gone?"

She was mourning not just her husband, but the man who had been everything to her: "father, mother, friend, companion, advisor, lover, guardian angel." Without him she felt utterly lost.

"He did everything -- everywhere! Nothing did I do without him, from the greatest to the smallest, from State Affairs, from Political Questions to the arranging (of) our Albums, our little photographs, the designing and ordering of Jewelry, the buying of a dress or a bonnet ... all was done together; my first word was 'I must ask Albert.'"

To all the readers of the Huffington Post, come and join me in celebrating the love story of Young Victoria: a young girl who was the niece of the King and took the crown of England at 18 years of age.

This film is a contemporary love story written by the great Julian Fellowes, directed by Jean Marc Vallee, produced by Martin Scorsese and Graham King, Tim Headington and me, Sarah Ferguson.

Emily Blunt plays Victoria and the beautiful Rupert Friend plays Albert. It has a full British cast and was filmed on location in British castles and palaces. Graham King kept his word when he said this would be a film Her Majesty would be proud of, and Julian Fellowes certainly made the film historically accurate.

I have never been more proud, than when I was standing on a London pavement watching a red double decker bus go by with Emily Blunt's face on it, saying Young Victoria. A seed of an idea, which started some 15 to 17 years ago, was now a huge movie for the big screen, and as the doors of the Odeon, Leicester Square closed, preparing for the next premiere, I smiled inside, knowing that deep down this was my idea, and dreams really do come true if you have the passion and tenacity to hold on firmly and boldly to those dreams ...

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."

-Goethe
(1749-1832)

Allison Gilbert: Parentless Parents: Using The Holidays To Keep The Memory Of Your Parents Alive -- Part 1

2009-12-16T16:40:42Z

This is the 13th year I'm not celebrating the holidays with my mom. The 8th year without my dad. And because both of my parents have passed away, and because I am now a mom myself, I take on responsibilities in December that other parents may not; I am my children's primary teller of family history; the go-to explainer of why we cook certain foods; the main person they ask why we follow specific traditions. My parents simply can't share the burden or the stories. Without my parents -- Jake and Lexi's grandparents -- it's up to me to make up for the shortfall.

That's why it's surprising that less than half of all mothers and fathers who have taken the Parentless Parents survey so far say they use the holidays to talk about their parents who have died. Why so few? The holidays are the perfect time to keep the memory of your parents alive for your children. After all, you have their full attention. They're home, looking to be entertained, and they're not distracted by homework, play dates, or after school activities.

Of the 45 percent of parentless parents who say they use the holidays to talk about their parents, many say they do so to help their children understand why they perform certain rituals or follow particular traditions. In the Parentless Parents survey, which is part of the research I am conducting for my forthcoming book, Parentless Parents: How the Deaths of Our Mothers and Fathers Impact the Way We Parent Our Own Children, respondents have written broadly about the kind of proactive conversations they have with their children. Some conversations can help kids know a little more about you when you were their age. One parent writes, "I tell stories of how we celebrated together as a family when I was a child." Other parents describe taking advantage of opportunities that only show up this time of year -- whether in the kitchen, "We talk about the types of food my mother used to make," or in the living room, "I talk to my children about [my parents] as we put up the Christmas tree."

Talking isn't the only way to keep the memory of your parents alive for your children and in next week's blog I will explore some creative ideas for accomplishing the same goal.

But you can't argue with the power of good conversation. It's cheap, easy, and completely portable.

So, I have a challenge for you. In the next few days, if you find yourself out of breath with all the cooking, cleaning, shopping, and wrapping -- stop. Stop and take a deep, cleansing breath. Stop and consider how you can use the holidays to keep the memory of your parents alive for your children. And with all that extra time, talk. Talking with your children about the grandparents they never knew, or the grandparents they miss, is perhaps one of the greatest gifts you can give your children -- and it doesn't even have to go on sale.

How do you use the holidays to keep the memory of your parents alive? Let me know in the comment section below. You can also join the discussion by taking the Parentless Parents survey. I'll use your anonymous responses in my book.

***

Allison Gilbert is currently writing her third non-fiction book, Parentless Parents: How the Deaths of Our Mothers and Fathers Impact the Way We Parent Our Own Children. If you are a parent who has lost both your parents, you can help with her research by taking the Parentless Parents online survey. You can also join the "Parentless Parents" community on Facebook.

Parentless Parents will be published by Hyperion and is a follow-up to her critically acclaimed book, Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents. Parentless Parents will explore how the way we parent is shaped by the loss of our own mothers and fathers; how marriages are impacted when one spouse is parentless and the other is not; and offer strategies for keeping the memory of our parents alive for our children.

In Always Too Soon, Ms. Gilbert (a producer at CNN in New York and mother of two children) interviewed celebrities and others about losing their parents. She spoke with, among others, Rosanne Cash, Geraldine Ferraro, Ice-T, Yogi Berra, Mariel Hemingway, and New York Times best-selling authors, Hope Edelman and Barbara Ehrenreich. Always Too Soon sparked the formation of the Parentless Parents organization, a national network of support groups for mothers and fathers who have lost their own parents. You can find out more about Ms. Gilbert by visiting her website at www.allisongilbert.com.

Tony Sachs: My Top Ten Old New (Or Is It New Old?) Records of 2009

2009-12-16T08:29:48Z

In 2009 I had a certain milestone birthday, the number of which I don't wish to discuss here. So it's no wonder that I felt more disconnected from what's going on in pop music than ever before. I mean, it is me just getting old and out of touch, right? It couldn't be that new music nowadays just sucks... could it? Then again, the two most popular recording artists of the year were Michael Jackson and the Beatles, so maybe I'm not missing that much after all.

Most of the "new" music I've gotten into this year is actually old music that's never been heard before, dredged up from the vaults just in time to make a buck before recorded music ceases to have any monetary value whatsoever. And by that yardstick, 2009 was a tremendous year. My top ten includes punk and funk, jazz and classic rock, legends and unknowns -- and all of it was recorded between ten and fifty-five years ago. The catch is that none of it was made available to the record-buying public until now.

With apologies to Herb Alpert & Lani Hall, A.C. Newman, Bob Dylan, The Disciplines, and especially Brendan Benson, whose My Old, Familiar Friend was my favorite genuinely new album of the year, here, in ascending order, are my top ten old new (or is it new old?) records of 2009:

10. LOVE - Love Lost (Sundazed). One of the most ambitious and dazzling American bands of the '60s, Love's stock was falling by 1971, when these tracks were recorded for a Columbia album that never materialized. The band members who'd helped to craft masterpieces like 1967's Forever Changes had long since disappeared, leaving leader Arthur Lee with a less subtle and harder rocking crew in its stead. As a result, much of this album sounds like Lee's recently deceased friend Jimi Hendrix -- Lee even slips in a minute or two of Jimi's "Ezy Ryder" into one song. So what makes Love Lost a keeper? For one thing, if anyone has the right to sound like Hendrix, it's Arthur Lee, who was friends with Jimi, and an early musical influence besides. These songs are in the Hendrix mode, but with an exception or two, they're not pastiches or hollow imitations -- and they genuinely rock. For my money, though, the highlight is five gorgeous solo acoustic demos that showcase what a great singer and songwriter Lee was even at this relatively late date.

9. BING CROSBY - The CBS Radio Recordings 1954-56 (Mosaic). People tend to forget that in the '20s and early '30s, before Bing Crosby was the mellow crooner of "White Christmas" and other assorted pop pablum, he was a remarkable and innovative singer of hot jazz. These mid '50s recordings -- all 160 of them, 144 of which are previously unreleased -- were made with a small jazz combo, and while he sounds pretty relaxed compared to his earlier recordings, Der Bingle's sense of rhythm is still razor sharp, and his way with a melody impeccable as always. And for fans who wish he'd recorded less ephemera during his heyday, a good chunk of these tunes are standards by the likes of Gershwin, Porter, Arlen, et al., that he'd never cut before, as well as some swinging takes on vintage jazz chestnuts.

8. TREAT HER RIGHT - The Lost Album (Hi-N-Dry). I'm generally not into white dudes from the '80s trying to play the blues, but THR, who were active from 1985-91, were uncommonly good at it. They're best remembered today as the band that Mark Sandman and Billy Conway cut their teeth in before they went on to form the '90s alt-rock band Morphine (more on them later). Indeed, Sandman's songwriting and vocals and Conway's spare, powerful drumming are highlights of this collection of ten previously unreleased tracks. But Dave Champagne also contributes some fine tunes along with a searing, biting lead guitar. And Jim Fitting's roaring vocals and brilliant harp work make me wonder why he's still playing clubs in his native Cambridge, MA. The man deserves better.

7. FRANK SINATRA - New York (Reprise). This box set, featuring live performances recorded in various NYC venues between 1955-90, could have been so much better than it is. Given that he performed regularly in Noo Yawk for his entire career, the selection of not one but two concerts from 1974, a very shaky year pipes-wise for Ol' Blue Eyes, is inexplicable. And chopping up two fine latter-day concerts so that they'd fit on one CD, while another disc runs all of 35 minutes, is similarly boneheaded. But we're dealing with Frank Sinatra here, so despite the estate's bungling of the project, there's still plenty of music to love. And the kicker is a DVD of a triumphant, rafter-raising Carnegie Hall show from 1980. Hearing him sing at the top of his game is amazing enough, but watching him perform takes it to a whole 'nother level. (For a more in-depth review of the box, click here.)

6. THE JACKSON 5 - I Want You Back! The Unreleased Masters (Motown/UMG). Motown wasted no time vault-diving in the wake of Michael Jackson's death, coming up with a dozen vintage tracks, recorded between 1970-74, that had thus far escaped the barrel-scrapers. Sounds like a gruesome quickie exploitation, right? Well, it is, I guess. But it's also a tremendous album, which may hold together better than any of the J5's "real" early LPs. Highlights include "Buttercup," written and produced by Stevie Wonder from an unreleased album he cut with Michael; an early version of "ABC" with an alternate vocal melody that's almost as cool as the one we know and love; and a Sly-meets-Marvin Gaye funk track about What's Wrong With The World Today. There are a couple of relative duds, but on the whole this is a surprisingly good collection.

5. SCOTT LAFARO - Pieces Of Jade (Resonance). Even jazzbos who don't know LaFaro's name have probably heard his bass playing on Bill Evans' classic albums Sunday At The Village Vanguard and Waltz For Debby. LaFaro was killed in a car accident in 1961 just days after they were recorded, cutting his legacy tragically short. In fact, this is the first album released under his own name. It's a grab-bag of odds and ends, with the centerpiece being a 1960 session recorded with pianist Don Friedman and drummer Pete LaRoca. It's as good, in its own way, as LaFaro's work with Bill Evans -- Friedman is a hell of a pianist in his own right, and their take on "Green Dolphin Street" is one of the most beautiful trio recordings I've ever heard. LaFaro is given ample space to stretch out with fluid, melodic and inventive solos. Among the other selections are a fascinating if somewhat low-fi rehearsal tape of LaFaro and Evans, and a 1966 interview in which Evans speaks very movingly about his late bandmate. A great tribute.

4. DEATH - For The Whole World To See (Drag City). Detroit in the late '60s and early '70s was home to both the soul factory of Motown and howling proto-punkers like the MC5 and the Stooges. It seems almost inevitable, then, that a black band would have taken the wrong turn on the way to Hitsville USA and wound up rocking out with the white kids. So why did Death not become cult heroes like their peers? Maybe the world simply wasn't ready for a black rock band. Or maybe it's the music, which was so far ahead of its time that it still sounds fresh all these years later. The seven 1974-vintage tracks on this CD -- apparently Death's entire recorded legacy -- are ferocious, buzzsaw rock that not only anticipate the punk movement of the late '70s but the more advanced time signatures and songcraft of '80s bands like the Bad Brains. Legend has it that Clive Davis was interested in signing Death in the mid '70s, but only if they changed their name. Instead of capitulating, they told him to buzz off. 1975's loss is 2009's gain.

3. BETTY DAVIS - Is It Love Or Desire (Light In The Attic). Remembered for both her career as a '70s funkette and her brief marriage to Miles Davis, I was never too impressed by what I'd heard of Betty Davis. Which makes this white-hot slab of raunchy funk even more surprising. Never released or even bootlegged until now, Is It Love Or Desire apparently sank in a sea of record company politics back in 1976, not to mention the onrushing tide of disco. Heaven only knows how music this hard and uncompromising would have been received in a year when "Disco Duck" was a #1 hit. But it's not just the music here that kicks ass. Davis squeals, growls and moans incisive, biting lyrics about gender roles, sexual politics, and most tellingly, the music biz itself -- which she left for good after this record got shelved.

2. ELLA FITZGERALD - Twelve Nights In Hollywood (Hip-O Select/UMG). In 1961-62, when the 4 CDs making up this limited-edition box set were recorded, Ella was at the peak of her powers, meaning she could go tonsil-to-tonsil with any other singer before or since. Whether it's a tender ballad, an uptempo swinger or a jazzy scat-fest, for 75 astounding tracks there's nary a blown phrase or a bum note, or even an uninspired moment. Ella was recording so much in the early '60s that this treasure trove, recorded at the Crescendo Club in Hollywood with a small group featuring Paul Smith on piano, must have seemed like no big deal at the time -- which is why the tapes stayed in the vaults for close to half a century. In 2009, however, it's the musical equivalent of King Tut's tomb coming to light.

1. MORPHINE - At Your Service (Rhino). Morphine's sound -- a two-string slide bass, saxophone and drums playing a hybrid of blues, rock, funk, pop, jazz and beat poetry -- was completely unique during the grunge-laden '90s. Ten years after bassist/vocalist/songwriter Mark Sandman died onstage of a heart attack, there's still no other band out there that sounds like them. Morphine had only completed five albums when Sandman died, but he recorded almost every note the band played together. This cache of 35 live and studio recordings, all of them previously unreleased, is the tip of the iceberg. Longtime fans can salivate over live-in-the-studio radio broadcasts; alternate versions of well-known songs that often differ radically from the finished records; and tunes only previously heard in concert, or not at all. But for newcomers, the quality of the writing and performances here is so uniformly good that this could serve as an introduction to the band -- a sort of parallel universe greatest-hits album. This is one band that richly deserves to be rediscovered, and At Your Service is a fine place to start. (For more on Morphine and Mark Sandman, click here.)

Coming up next time, more of my favorite records of '09 -- 1909, that is. Stay tuned!

Oral Roberts Dies: Evangelist, University Founder Dead At 91

2009-12-15T15:48:23Z

TULSA, Okla. — Oral Roberts, who helped pioneer TV evangelism in the 1950s and used the power of the new medium – and his message of God's healing power – to build a multimillion-dollar ministry and a university that bears his name, died Tuesday. He was 91.

Roberts died of complications from pneumonia in Newport Beach, Calif., according to his spokesman, A. Larry Ross. The evangelist was hospitalized after a fall on Saturday.

Robert Lanza, M.D.: Can Science Resurrect God? New Scenario Says 'Yes'

2009-12-15T14:16:04Z

According to Nicholas Wade, veteran New York Times science reporter, and author of the new book The Faith Instinct, religious fervor has dwindled of late because religions have failed to keep pace with human knowledge. For faith to thrive, our concepts of God must adapt to our evolving scientific knowledge.

What happens if we project our current scientific knowledge into the future? A new scenario suggests the evolution of a new concept of God.

Imagine 100 years ago, looking up into the sky and seeing a pinhead in the stratosphere, and someone telling you the dot contained 400 people whizzing off to China faster than the chariots of the Greek gods. Or consider the progress with cloning; we now have the ability to resurrect species that no longer exist, such as the Bucardo mountain goat - and using chromosome transfer, we can create a mate for it just like God did for Adam in the Garden of Eden.

Now imagine what will be possible in 100 billion years.

While in medical school (working with heart-transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard), I remember lifting the heart out of the chest of a dead man and putting it into another person to give him life. But all this is minor compared to everything we might ultimately experience. Science suggests it's far beyond anything we have ever projected to any God. It's only a short jump from quantum theory to the communion between the spiritual and extended worlds. One mainstream position states that there are an infinite number of universes, the 'multiverse'. A new scientific theory - Biocentrism - suggests that time and space are not the hard objects we think, and that we will personally experience the totality of existence in the multiverse.

Science has only been around for a few hundred years (and quantum physics less than 100 years). At some point - perhaps in a thousand years, or maybe a million years of scientific evolution − we will completely master our understanding of spatio-temporal reality. We will be able to recreate information systems to generate any consciousness-based physical reality. In fact, according to Biocentrism, space and time have no absolute existence independent of these relationships.

You may even have the power to go back in time to end the world in a flood by simply modifying a specific spatio-temporal bubble. You could make a blind person see, or a crippled person walk. Indeed, my colleagues and I recently published experiments showing we could use stem cells to prevent blindness and to restore blood flow to limbs that might otherwise have required amputation.

As far-fetched as some of these projections seem, consider that even today - in our scientific infancy - we can clone organisms from a single cell or even a hair follicle. It doesn't take much extrapolation to realize that at some point we will possess the knowledge to take a cell from, say, my friend Vicki's mother, who was crippled from polio and died young, and resurrect her without the polio. And although I'm against human reproductive cloning, the science almost exists already - a few years ago we used cloning to resurrect a Banteng -an endangered ox-like animal - that had died over a quarter-of-a-century earlier from a broken back. It was surreal watching an Iowa cow give birth to an exotic creature that lives in the bamboo jungles of Southeast Asia (it's now living happily with a herd of Bantengs at the San Diego Zoo).

A few days ago I attended my 35th high school reunion with Vicki, one of my oldest friends. Memories of her long-dead mother flashed across my mind as though they had occurred yesterday. Vicki's mother was a kind, self-effacing woman. Her legs were in braces as the result of polio, and it was a struggle for her to bring out dessert when I visited. She was the mother I always wanted; she always joked that she was going to adopt me. Due to her disability she spent a lot of time watching TV, and was always watching those fake wrestling matches where they throw people around. We chuckled that this frail, gentle woman watched such shows. In fact, it is Vicki's mom who inspired me after college to work with Jonas Salk who developed the polio vaccine (which has eradicated polio from the earth).

When I picked Vicki up, I knew her mom would have been thrilled to know that we were going to our 35th high school reunion together. If she had still been alive, she would have probably been watching wrestling, and told us some funny story to make us laugh before sending us on our way. How proud she would have been for both of us today (Vicki is now a successful lawyer, and I'm a doctor). It's sad she never lived to see that. But in truth, she did see it somewhere in the multiverse. And it doesn't matter how small the probability is, since all these histories are connected outside of time. What matters is that somewhere Vicki's mom knows - whether you want to call it 'heaven' or not; no one has a monopoly on what heaven means and how it's experienced. As hard as it is to fathom, somewhere outside of our limited linear thinking, Vicki and I will indeed get to visit her mom.

As we left for our reunion that night, somewhere Vicki's mom leaned back on the sofa and watched the rest of the wrestling match with a smile on her face.

Robert Lanza, MD is author of over two dozen scientific books, including "Biocentrism," a new book that lays out his theory of everything.

Sophie Keller: How Happy Is... Losing A Baby

2009-12-15T08:26:02Z

I lost a baby when I was 20 weeks pregnant and even though it was a very heavy experience to go through, I did what I usually do, which is I turned a very hard experience and used it to learn more about myself, heal some wounds and grow from it as much as I could.

Many of you who read my work on the Huffington Post or on my website howhappyis.com know that my goal is to give you tips to make a difference to your own lives. All the tips that I write are from my own experience and I only write what I know and practice, without talking about myself too much, as my articles are for you, not for me. However, today here is something different. A personal story that I have been asked to write many times about how I lost my baby at 20 weeks pregnant.

I know that many of you reading this will have either experienced something similar or know of someone who has. Whether it was you, your partner or someone you know of, many of us share similar stories that we don't tend to discuss in public, but the affect of the experience runs deep and many of us bear comparable scars. Maybe you lost the baby before 20 weeks pregnant, maybe after, maybe even when the baby was born. The question is how can you get through the emotional turmoil of losing a baby and turn it in to a growing, healing experience?

My husband and I did not have problems getting pregnant, which is usually a very prevalent issue, and believe me I am on the upper end of getting pregnant. Maybe it was genetics, combined with the fact that I have hardly ever drunk, taken drugs or smoked. On top of that I eat 90 percent organic food, cleanse regularly, practice a lot of yoga, believe the colon is the key to your health and have taken prenatal vitamins for years.

Saying that, all seemed to be going well with the pregnancy up until 12 weeks, when my doctor recommended I do the CVS test, (Chorionic Villus Sampling), whereby a tissue sample of the placenta is taken to test for chromosomal abnormalities. I decided to take her advice even though I knew there was a risk in having the test, but at the time, also thought it best to do what the doctor recommended.

So my husband and I went together to a highly regarded specialist. When I booked my appointment the receptionist did not tell me on the phone to drink lots of water before the appointment, so that my bladder would be full, which would make it easier to get to my placenta through my abdomen. (The test can be done in two different ways, through the cervix and through the abdomen.) I was not told to do anything, except that we were to have a counseling session first. When the time came to have the test done the doctor decided to go in through the cervix.

The test should really only take a few minutes, but the doctor seemed to have trouble getting to the placenta and tried to go in about three times, for about 10 minutes or so. The room was freezing cold, my teeth were chattering, my legs were shaking and tears were streaming down my face. I remember at the time being in so much pain and it was pretty obvious how distressed I was. My husband also had a feeling at this point that something was going wrong but didn't say anything as the doctor seemed adamant about getting the job done. And, many of you might be able to relate to this, but in a doctor's surgery it is really easy to go against instinct and not question a doctor while he is working.

I left the surgery, started to bleed immediately and that night called the doctor. He said it would be fine in a day or two. The CVS test came back and the baby was healthy. But then the bleeding didn't stop for days, in fact weeks. Two months to be exact. I went in to have ultrasounds every week because of the bleeding and they said the baby looked fine and maybe it was placenta previa. In fact, they gave every excuse apart from the obvious, that maybe, just maybe, the placenta might have been damaged during the procedure. One day I rushed in to the doctor with blood pouring out at such a rapid rate, I looked like Lady Macbeth, when she has blood on her hands. Still, they said the baby was fine. I lay in bed for days on end and it just got worse. In fact, I tried everything to make it stop but it went on for two months solid.

Then week 18, I had a blood test and was told to go in to the CVS specialist to have an ultrasound, as the result was not quite right. The nurse looked at the baby on the ultrasound, patted my leg and walked out the door with photos. The doctor came in, sat down and said "Sophie, there is no easy way to say this, but your baby is dying. The amniotic fluid has come out."

I collapsed in to my husband's arms. The grief and despair was unfathomable. I immediately blamed myself. Maybe I shouldn't have said yes to the test, maybe I didn't want her enough; maybe I should have laid in bed for weeks, maybe, maybe, maybe... In that moment, it all just poured in and on top of. The doctor came back in and said "Sophie, this was not your fault, these things happen, don't blame yourself. Heal from this experience and you will be back next year."

When we got home we called the clinic where we were to have the baby taken out, they had no appointments for seven days! I had to let her die inside of me and wait till the following week. The irony was that I had spent my entire dating life being extra careful and practicing safe sex with a religious fervor due to an extreme fear of what would happen if I had an unwanted pregnancy, and yet here I was about to have the worst termination possible.

It is impossible to describe to you how it feels knowing that your baby is dying inside of your own body at 20 weeks old and that there is nothing you can do about it. You just have to let it happen. There are no words.

One week later, my husband, Oliver, and I went to the clinic and waited about four hours to be seen. The doctor had the bedside manner of an SS officer, and seemed so cut off, but I guess she needed to be, to do what she did. The first day I went under anesthetic so they could force me in to labor, then they sent me home with a series of drugs and I was to come back in the following day for the same thing and on the third day they were going to take her out.

Oliver and I again had to wait the second day for hours and we tried to divert our attention by playing computer golf while we waited. I said to him, "I am going to go through so many emotions in the next period of time and am going to let them pass in and out without censoring any of them as if they are wrong. Oli, don't feel that you need to take on any of them as you have had a different experience and I will be letting them pass through me. All I need is for you to hold my hand as I go through them, hug me, do what you usually do, but you don't need to feel guilty if you don't feel it to the extent that I do, as you weren't the one carrying the baby." And that's exactly what he did. He was incredible.

I finally went in to the operating room, they asked me if when I wake up, I would like to hold my baby or have a footprint of her. I declined. They put me under anesthetic again and when I woke out of my drugged state they told me that they had managed to take her out. I cried and found it hard to stop. "How was she?" I asked. "Mangled." The doctor replied. I shouldn't have asked.

We went home and that night we decided to light a candle and let it burn until it went out by itself. We both sat by the candle and said to our baby what we had learned from her being in our lives and the gifts that she had given us without even being born. We got pregnant so quickly that I wasn't sure at the time how ready I was to be a mother and yet after this experience I knew that I was ready. I was at first concerned about having a girl, as even though I get on well with my mother now, as a child we tended to clash. So there was a fear that that would happen for me as well. It was a concern that actually disappeared during the pregnancy. One thing was for sure, this baby taught me so much without ever bring born.

In the next number of months I didn't deny any of the feelings that came up, instead just let them be there whenever they wanted. I knew that in order to heal, grow and have a very different experience the next time that I had to go in to this deep, dark tunnel of grief, guilt, anger, sadness and loss, as those were the feelings I felt at intermittent times. I didn't force any of the emotions to be there or to not be there, but just let each one envelope me whenever it wanted, without letting any particular one grab hold permanently and then walked through them, as if walking through a fog and eventually, in time, out the other side.

Nine months later we changed doctors and we decided to try again. I deliberately decided that the next time I was pregnant not to bring any baggage from the first experience in to the next.

Once again, we were very lucky, the first time we tried, I knew instinctively half an hour later that I was pregnant. Eleven weeks in, we did the First Trimester Screening and it was recommended, because of my age, to do the CVS or Amnio. I knew that I did not want to wait till twenty weeks to see if there was anything wrong with the baby and by the time we got the results we had only a 2-day window if I was to get the CVS. All the doctors that were recommended were away or booked up except the doctor who did the CVS on me before. Maybe fate was making us return to him and that's exactly what we did. We needed to speak to him about the last experience and to let go of any blame that Oli or I might still have been carrying.

Doctors are fallible, they don't know everything and sometimes bad things just happen and you take the lesson and move on. When the doctor came in to the room, the first thing that he did was apologize for the last experience. He said that I was one of the fatalities that they talk about when doing the CVS. Although I can't help thinking how many more there are as mine certainly was not put on record! This time, he went in through the abdomen and the CVS examination went smoothly with no problem at all.

Every moment of my second pregnancy was incredible. There was no fear, no distress, nothing except complete joy. Somehow I knew I wasn't meant to have that last experience again. My next lesson was in having a baby. Forty-one weeks later Judah arrived by C-section at 8lb 5oz, a full head of hair and completely perfect.

He is such a happy baby and I am sure the complete joy that I felt in the pregnancy had a lot to do with that. He is always laughing, smiling, full of joy and flirting with the women. A few weeks ago he said "Mama" and looked at me. Heaven! This week he got his first two bottom teeth and has now learned how to crawl. He is 9 months old and glorious.

Every day I thank God for this miracle baby and feel blessed that he chose me to be his Mother. I look at him and tears can so easily come in to my eyes, as I am so grateful for this blessing. Having a healthy baby is truly a miracle. And yes, I am going to go again.

I am doing a webinar in the New Year on how to heal, grow and get over losing a baby, and how to use the experience positively. If you have experienced a loss at any time and feel that you could do with getting some great tips or if you would like to gift someone or send some one that you know who has had that experience at any time in their life and still needs to heal from it, please go to my website at www.howhappyis.com. Otherwise you can go to my website anyway to read more articles, see my Balanced Life segments on the KTLA 5 Morning Television Show, ask me questions and sign up for the monthly news letter. Have a great week. Love Sophie x

Lloyd I. Sederer, MD: Suicide Prevention: R U OK?

2009-12-14T10:24:03Z

Sunday November 29th was R U OK Day in Australia.

R U OK? (are you ok?) is an Australian national suicide prevention effort developed by an organization that seeks to reduce the rate of suicide by breaking the isolation and helplessness that characterizes people at risk to take their lives. This organization had its genesis from the death of Barry Larkin, a businessman and consultant who took his life in 1995; his three sons decided to introduce a conversation they never had the opportunity to have with their dad. Australians at work, home and among friends are now prompted to break the silence and ask 'are you ok'?

To help everyday people ask this not so easy question, R U OK? offers suggestions, which I paraphrase:

Be open and receptive, take the lead and ask 'are you ok?'; convey that you have time to talk.

Say something that suggests concern and opens the conversation, like 'I've noticed you have looked really stressed' or 'I understand this is a very tough time for you'.

Listening is more important than telling. You need not know answers. Your interest and your seeking to end a person's isolation and aloneness is what counts

Be hopeful, but not superficial. Periods of serious stress and depression can and do pass -- especially if someone feels that others care and that there is help they can get.

Don't expect someone to cheer up, or get over it. Instead, suggest to a person who says 'no, I'm not ok' that there are ways to get better - which start with their taking one step at a time. Sometime that step is talking with others, taking better care of themselves, or speaking with a doctor or mental health professional.

In the United States, 31,000 people commit suicide each year. This does not count those who disguise their suicide in the form of an accidental death or where natural causes are attributed to what was an act of self-destruction. This is three times the homicide rate in this country. And the suicide rate is increasing, for the first time in a decade, especially among Caucasian women aged 40-64.

I recently heard about a man I had known, a very successful lawyer, who had suffered from depression. He was no complainer: the bigger the demand the more he was there to meet it. But a difficult financial time coupled with developing diabetes were the stressors that prompted his depression. The strain showed, at work and at home, but those that cared about him felt awkward; how could they say something to him, since it was he who always took care of everything and everyone? This story does not have a happy ending. He took his life, alone, in his car, far from home. Who knows if the outcome could have been different? But we do know that the mix of depression, health or financial problems, a personality that has difficulty asking for help, and no one daring to ask 'are you ok' can be a deadly combination.

For you to have the confidence to initiate an 'are you ok' conversation, you may need to know what to do if you uncover an immediate crisis. In Australia, and here in the USA, there are National Help Lines if you ask someone 'are you ok?' and then sense that person may be in imminent danger of doing something self-destructive -- and perhaps irrevocable. If you are not familiar with local services or who to turn to there is a National Suicide Prevention Hotline (1-800-273-TALK) in the USA. It is free, confidential, 24/7, and connected to crisis centers throughout the country.

We are entering the holiday season -- a time where many are not so merry and feelings of isolation often peak. One kindness we can offer friends, family, fellow students, or colleagues at work is asking 'are you ok'? This is a good time to ask and to take the time to listen. It may be the greatest gift of all.

The opinions expressed herein are solely my own as a psychiatrist and public health advocate.
Lloyd I Sederer, MD

Irene Rubaum-Keller: Surviving A Loved One's Suicide

2009-12-10T11:54:00Z

Once someone you love commits suicide, you become a suicide survivor. That is what you are called. If someone you love dies of natural causes, or even in an accident, you are not called a survivor. Suicide is different.

When someone you love kills themselves, you experience something we ( in the grief world) call "complicated mourning". In other words; it is not a straight-forward grieving process as it would be when you lose your 95-year-old Grandma who dies peacefully in her sleep. Suicide was a choice. Suicide is often violent. It is also something that the person generally plans.

Just over a year ago my baby brother took his own life. He was 40. I have now become a suicide survivor and it truly sucks. The feelings are not just sadness but also anger, denial, more anger and a little guilt. I am grateful that I don't have a lot of guilt in that I do feel that I did all I could to help my brother deal with his issues. The fact that my, and the family's, input wasn't enough to turn him around is so sad.

I wish my brother could have come to his memorial before he took his life. If he could have been there to see how many people loved him, how many people were devastated at the thought of never seeing him again, and how many shattered lives he left in his wake, I have a hard time believing he would have actually gone through with it.

Over the years, as a psychotherapist, I have worked with many people who are suicide survivors. It is such a uniquely painful loss that I have always felt a bit powerless to help survivors heal. It helps some to think that we can never really know another's pain. That the person we lost was so miserable here that they didn't consider what their suicide would to do us. Or, if they did consider it, were in too much pain to let that stop them.

I am fortunate that I don't believe suicide is a sin. I don't believe that if you commit suicide you are doomed and will go to hell for eternity. If you were in enough pain to end your life, I think you lived your hell right here. You get a free pass to heaven.

I have missed my brother everyday since he died. I think I will always miss him.

If you'd like to make contact with Irene, you can find her here.

Dr. Irene S. Levine: Love, loss and friendship: Getting over the death of a child

2009-12-09T12:19:38Z

There is no pain greater than the loss of a child. Parents who have suffered such a tragedy say that they never get over it; at best, they get through it. Lynn Bozof of Atlanta, Georgia, lost her son Evan when he was 20. A junior at Georgia Southwestern University, Evan was an honor student and a pitcher on his college baseball team. Below Lynn shares her experience of how the friends she made through a support group helped her cope with this unimaginable loss.

Can you briefly describe the circumstances leading to Evan's death in 1998?

Evan was away at school when he complained of a horrible headache, the worst he'd ever had. He was nauseated and couldn't hold anything down. We told him to get a friend to take him to the emergency room. When he arrived at the ER, the doctors thought he had a virus but kept him overnight so that he could get some extra rest.

I called my son about 7AM the next day but he was too sick to talk. I had the nurse put the phone up to his ear and asked if he wanted us to pick him up to come home for the weekend. He did. Before we could even leave home, we received a call from the hospital saying that Evan had meningococcal meningitis and was in critical condition.

When you get a phone call like this, your mind can't fully absorb what you're being told. My husband and I drove three hours to see Evan, not knowing if he would be alive when we got there. A few hours later, the doctors transferred him to a larger hospital, better equipped to handle bacterial meningitis. As he was taken to the ambulance, I told him, "Love you, Evan." As weak and sick as he was, he said, "Love you, Mom." Those were the last words he said to us.

Before long, all of his organs started to shut down. His fingers, his toes, his ears, and his nose all turned black, then his entire hands and feet, and the gangrene kept spreading up his limbs. We watched Evan fight to breathe, fight to live. Two weeks later, he was transferred to a third hospital. His arms had to be amputated above the elbows and his legs above the knees. We signed consent forms allowing the doctors to amputate as much as was necessary to save his life. Several days later, he had grand mal seizures for 10 hours that caused irreversible brain swelling, leaving him brain-dead.

Our son Evan, whom we loved more than we can ever put into words, had to be disconnected from the machines that were keeping him alive. He was placed in a body bag in front of our eyes.

Were your friends at home a source of solace and support after the death? How did they react?

Many friends offered support and were great, but some tried to avoid me. They probably didn't know how to handle it. I felt different and alone, as if were wearing a sign, "Mother who lost her son." Not only was I dealing with grief--but also somehow I felt guilty that I had allowed this to happen.

After Evan's death, what drew you and your husband to get involved with a support group?

At that time, my husband and I never knew that college students were at increased risk for meningitis. When we found out that a meningitis vaccine existed, we realized that our son didn't have to die. And if we didn't know about the vaccine, we were sure there were other parents who didn't know either.

We met other parents who had similar stories: The common denominator was that none of us knew that this disease was potentially vaccine-preventable. To have more of an impact, we banded together to form a national organization, the National Meningitis Association (NMA). Along the way, I met other moms, never knowing how closely our shared tragedies would bond us together.

Can you describe the special bond between you and other Meningitis Moms? Do you consider them friends?

There's a line from a Charles Dickens book, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Losing a child is, by far, the worst of times; there is nothing worse. For me, the "best of times" came into being with the wonderful friendships I formed within NMA, especially with a group we call Moms on Meningitis (M.O.M.s).

Meningitis swoops down and robs you of someone you love. Friends can empathize and share your grief, but there's something so pernicious about the infection -- its relentlessness, the way it invades your child's body -- which only a mom who has gone through it, can understand. Through this common bond, we formed great friendships. We've laughed together, cried together, shared stories of children and grandchildren. We were tied together at first by grief, then by determination to not let this happen to other families. In the process, many of us became close friends.

Have you learned any lessons about female friendship through your family's tragedy?

I've learned that when you find friends, as bad as things may seem, you aren't alone. I know that when my feelings of grief start to overwhelm me, that I can reach out to one of the moms, and share my feelings. She isn't going to think I'm "overdoing it" or that it's time to "get over it." They know what I'm going through.

Just today, I "facebooked" another mom who is going through a holiday slump. While you miss your child each and every day, certain times of the year, when you expect your whole family to be together, the loss seems greater. I said that I was going through a slump, too, and just knowing that each of us wasn't alone, made us both feel better and feel closer. While I don't want anyone else to lose someone they love to meningitis and become a part of our support group, I'm very grateful for the friendships I've formed while dealing with the loss of my child.

* Lynn Bozof has been the President of the National Meningitis Association since 2002.

* DISCLOSURE: After writing several national magazine articles about meningococcal disease and meeting the moms, the author joined the volunteer Advisory Committee of the MHA.

Information about meningococcal disease

Information about the National Meningitis Association

Information about the M.O.M.s program

Allison Gilbert: Parentless Parents: Do You Put On A "Happy Face" For The Holidays?

2009-12-09T11:29:32Z

'Tis the Season to be Jolly, right? How could I forget? I see reminders everywhere that I should be happy! But what happens if the month of December serves not only to remind you of all things Merry -- but of all the people you've lost?

Chanukah begins this Friday night and while I look forward to lighting candles with my husband and two children, I know the gift I really want, the one I truly long for, I'll never get: my parents being grandparents to my children. My parents will never be able to take pictures of their grandkids opening presents and my kids will never experience being the focus of all that extra grandparent love and attention. And I will miss all that, and so much more, too. I will miss being the one taken care of; I will miss being the one cooked for; I will miss being the daughter.

My dad died less than a year after my son, Jake's, first Chanukah. I have pictures of my father holding Jake in his lap, but my son who's now 9, doesn't remember it. My mom never met my children. She died of ovarian cancer before I was even married.

Last week, I announced some preliminary findings from the Parentless Parents online survey. The results of the survey will serve as part of the foundation for my forthcoming book, Parentless Parents: How the Deaths of Our Mothers and Fathers Impact the Way We Parent Our Own Children. If you haven't read last week's post, you can now by clicking here.

In the survey, I ask various questions related to the holidays. My goal is to understand if the loss of our parents impacts the way we experience the holidays with our children. In several sections, for example, I ask respondents how and if specific statements and situations apply to them. Here's one such statement: "I force myself to enjoy the holidays for the sake of my children." Does that sound like you? If it does, you are not alone. In fact, the majority of the more than 1,000 mothers and fathers who have already taken the Parentless Parents survey agree with that statement.

Here's what one parentless parent says about parenting without her parents:

"On the outside, it appears that I'm pretty well adjusted. I'm a good mom. I try really hard to be happy for my daughter's sake. Inside [though] I sometimes feel like a baby myself. I wish I could crawl into my mother's womb and go to sleep. There is such emptiness inside of me. I need someone to love me the way my mom and dad did. No one on earth -- not my husband, sister, daughter - has any idea how screwed up I feel inside."

Do you sometimes feel the need to put on a "Happy Face" during the holidays for the sake of your children?

Join the discussion and take the Parentless Parents survey. I'll use your anonymous responses in my book.

***

Allison Gilbert is currently writing her third non-fiction book, Parentless Parents: How the Deaths of Our Mothers and Fathers Impact the Way We Parent Our Own Children. If you are a parent who has lost both your parents, you can help with her research by taking the Parentless Parents online survey. You can also join the "Parentless Parents" community on Facebook.

Parentless Parents will be published by Hyperion and is a follow-up to her critically acclaimed book, Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents. Parentless Parents will explore how the way we parent is shaped by the loss of our own mothers and fathers; how marriages are impacted when one spouse is parentless and the other is not; and offer strategies for keeping the memory of our parents alive for our children.

In Always Too Soon, Ms. Gilbert (a producer at CNN in New York and mother of two children) interviewed celebrities and others about losing their parents. She spoke with, among others, Rosanne Cash, Geraldine Ferraro, Ice-T, Yogi Berra, Mariel Hemingway, and New York Times best-selling authors, Hope Edelman and Barbara Ehrenreich. Always Too Soon sparked the formation of the Parentless Parents organization, a national network of support groups for mothers and fathers who have lost their own parents. You can find out more about Ms. Gilbert by visiting her website at www.allisongilbert.com.

Donna Henes: Giving Thanks Every Day

2009-12-08T17:12:07Z

When we prosper and grow and the situations of our lives flow, when the going is good and the living is easy, it seems only natural to be thankful. But what about all those times when nothing seems to budge? When we are stuck in the rush hour traffic jam of daily life and our bodies and souls start to feel like banged up bumper cars? When we are tested and pounded and pummeled? When things seem so crazy we wonder what do we have to be thankful for?

What, indeed? We could start by being thankful that we were not born in Darfur, for instance. We could be thankful that we have all our faculties. That our sundry body parts work fairly well, considering how we abuse them. That we are still here at all, alive, erect, feet on the ground, given the alternative. We better be good and thankful!

The greatest gift of the mind is, perhaps, perspective. Our reflective, rational side keeps us in balance, helps us from running away with our emotions. "Well," my friend Daile once calmly commented in the midst of an intense work disaster that would normally have driven her quite mad, "at least nobody died." That's it, exactly. If we have a healthy sense of perspective, our lives become infinitely more precious to us and we automatically operate with an attitude of gratitude.

If you think about it, mortality offers us the ultimate perspective. People who have, themselves, been ill or who care-take others, have earned a certain appreciation of life in all of its permutations by way of confronting death. Aging helps us to be grateful, too. We understand only too well that times that are easy are easy and that the hard times don't ever get easy. That is why they are hard. But hard compared to what?

We have all witnessed, experienced or been privy to profound disasters and devastating tragedies. We have learned something, usually the hard way, of the infinite insidious adversities to which we humans are prey. And we have all known so many folks who did not make it this far in life. But even so, for most of us it is a daily, hourly, minutely learned lesson -- one that we easily forget. One that we would be wise to remember.

So lest you forget to be thankful at every turn, for every gift, grand and small, here is a suggestion for A Moving Meditation of Appreciation.

Take a walk someplace nice. Alone.

With every step you take, name one good thing that you have in your life, something for which you are sincerely grateful. Name each thing or being out loud or silently.

Step. My health.
Step. My spouse.
Step. My work.
Step. My dog.
Step. My friends
Step. My home.
Step. The clouds.
Step, The trees.
Step. The birds.
Step. The bunnies.
Step. The babies.
Step. The wind.
Step. The oceans.
Step. The beautiful moon.
Step. Music.
Step. Art.
Step. Books.
Step. Not knowing war.
Step. The love in my life.
Step. The air I breathe.
Step. The rhythm of my heart.
Step. My eye that can see.
Step. My own two feet.

This practice is a great cure for depression, defeatism, self-pity and envy. I highly recommend its use daily. Chant your gratitude every morning on the way to work and see how good you feel when you get there!

It is amazing, once we start, just how long our litany is. The more we recognize the extent of our gratitude, the longer the list becomes. We each have enough to be thankful for to recite as we walk along the entire length of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. Despite whatever difficulties we might face, we all are blessed with a profuse abundance of abundance in our lives. For this, let us give thanks.

Robert Lanza, M.D.: Does Death Exist? New Theory Says 'No'

2009-12-08T16:06:33Z

Many of us fear death. We believe in death because we have been told we will die. We associate ourselves with the body, and we know that bodies die. But a new scientific theory suggests that death is not the terminal event we think.

One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the "many-worlds" interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the 'multiverse'). A new scientific theory - called biocentrism - refines these ideas. There are an infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling - the 'Who am I?'- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn't go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other?

Consider an experiment that was recently published in the journal Science showing that scientists could retroactively change something that had happened in the past. Particles had to decide how to behave when they hit a beam splitter. Later on, the experimenter could turn a second switch on or off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle did in the past. Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it is you who will experience the outcomes that will result. The linkages between these various histories and universes transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time. Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply holo-projecting either this or that result onto a screen. Whether you turn the second beam splitter on or off, it's still the same battery or agent responsible for the projection.

According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air - if you take everything away, what's left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You can't see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.

Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, "Now Besso" (an old friend) "has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us...know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Immortality doesn't mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether.

This was clear with the death of my sister Christine. After viewing her body at the hospital, I went out to speak with family members. Christine's husband - Ed - started to sob uncontrollably. For a few moments I felt like I was transcending the provincialism of time. I thought about the 20-watts of energy, and about experiments that show a single particle can pass through two holes at the same time. I could not dismiss the conclusion: Christine was both alive and dead, outside of time.

Christine had had a hard life. She had finally found a man that she loved very much. My younger sister couldn't make it to her wedding because she had a card game that had been scheduled for several weeks. My mother also couldn't make the wedding due to an important engagement she had at the Elks Club. The wedding was one of the most important days in Christine's life. Since no one else from our side of the family showed, Christine asked me to walk her down the aisle to give her away.

Soon after the wedding, Christine and Ed were driving to the dream house they had just bought when their car hit a patch of black ice. She was thrown from the car and landed in a banking of snow.

"Ed," she said "I can't feel my leg."

She never knew that her liver had been ripped in half and blood was rushing into her peritoneum.

After the death of his son, Emerson wrote "Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature."

Whether it's flipping the switch for the Science experiment, or turning the driving wheel ever so slightly this way or that way on black-ice, it's the 20-watts of energy that will experience the result. In some cases the car will swerve off the road, but in other cases the car will continue on its way to my sister's dream house.

Christine had recently lost 100 pounds, and Ed had bought her a surprise pair of diamond earrings. It's going to be hard to wait, but I know Christine is going to look fabulous in them the next time I see her.

Robert Lanza, MD is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is the author of "Biocentrism," a book that lays out his theory of everything.

Biros Execution: Man Executed In Ohio By One-Drug Lethal Injection

2009-12-08T14:06:36Z

The execution of Kenneth Biros was carried out in Ohio this morning after a federal appeals court refused to intervene.

Biros died at 11:47 a.m. after a one-drug lethal injection, a method never used before on humans, per the New York Times.

The new method has been somewhat controversial as it involves a slower execution. Typically a three-drug process is used.

The process experimented with involves thiopental sodium, which puts people so deeply to sleep that they stop breathing and it is estimated to take just under 15 minutes.

Lawyers had been trying to fight the use, which they condemned as human experimentation.

Biros was sentenced to death for killing and dismembering a woman he met at a bar in 1991.

Colorado Mental Health Facilities Insecure: Audit

2009-12-07T16:51:23Z

DENVER (AP) -- Colorado needs to do a better job of tracking mental patients.

That's according to a state audit released Monday examining three of nine escapes in the last fiscal year.

Stephanie Gertler: Hearts And Souls: A Family Deals With Grief

2009-12-07T12:47:16Z

Oscar Wilde said "The truth is rarely pure and never simple." A sound theory that prevails as we are suspended in the moment, the past, and in what we believe to be our destinies.

On Saturday morning October 31 as my husband and I drove upstate for an overnight respite, my cell phone rang and my daughter's voice sang through the wires, "Hi Mommy" -- as though the words had far more than three syllables. Not that hearing her voice isn't always a melody for me, but there was a far more pronounced "lilt" in her greeting. And because I am often a good witch when it comes to those I love, I knew.

"We're engaged," she said, then recounting the details of the proposal: How Larry took her to Skinner Mountain where they had spent one of their earliest dates, secretly lugging champagne, orange juice, and glasses for mimosas in a knapsack (along with a ring). How they trudged up to the peak, and she was taken by surprise when he proposed despite their three years of cohabitation. And as always, I bit my lip and blinked away the tears of joy that wanted to trickle down my cheeks as she told her tale. I am reluctant to cry in any kind of "public," not wanting to appear vulnerable. I do my crying alone regardless of the reasons for my tears. And if there are people around, I seek a quiet place like a wounded animal.

That same afternoon, I received a call that my favorite uncle with whom I spoke at least three times a week and who is (was) in a small circle titled "a love in my life" went into hospice care, and was placed in a drug-induced coma where he could die peacefully and painlessly. I hadn't heard from him in two weeks, just messages from his wife who had said that things "are not good." His lack of calls had already flagged his demise for me. He never called me when his spirits or physical state were poor. I suppose I knew the truth that was to come, but I refused to believe.

And so, on Halloween when there are tricks and treats, worlds collided. The weekend spent in a conscious effort to compartmentalize. Emotions swinging wildly on a pendulum with such ferocity and velocity that it was hard to find a middle, and I didn't want one anyway. And then I realized, the truth was (and is) as Wilde said - indeed not simple: There was no resting place for the pendulum. I needed to deal and embrace both emotions at once: guiltlessly celebrating my daughter, painfully mourning my uncle (and yet the latter, until the moment he died, was not without hope and a childish belief in miracles).

Though I challenged Oscar Wilde because my truths that weekend were pure.

I cried from beginning to end at my uncle's funeral, and strangely required no place to hide in a room filled with hundreds of mourners - perhaps because I was as alone as every person there as they celebrated the life of this amazing and exquisite man.

But when I played Jesse Owens' "Will You Dance With Me for the Rest of Your Life?" as a suggested wedding song for Larry and Ellie the weekend after my uncle's funeral, I had to leave the room as tears came to my eyes when the music played.

On the heels of all this emotion, a brief vacation with friends in Miami where new friends were made and old friends embraced, there was a recapturing of life as I wanted to know it: laughter, sunshine, nothing "heavy." Each morning I took my coffee, sat on the terrace before sunrise, and called my voicemail, having saved the last message from my uncle not three weeks before. I listened to his voice, saving it for the 21 days guaranteed after each "press 9 to save this message." And then I called my daughter who was already planning the wedding. Both cleansed my soul as I started the day.

It wasn't but a day after our return to Manhattan that my sister, my brother and I met at our widowed 90-year-old father's apartment. We move him to a new apartment at the beginning of December, and so that Tuesday became the dreaded day we think about as parents grow older. Truly a day of reckoning as we decided what to keep and share, what to send along with him, what to donate to "good causes." We walked room by room, my brother carrying a notepad; floods of memories taunting me and daring me to laugh and cry. We tagged items in each room with colored adhesive dots I'd bought that morning at the stationer: green to "go with Dad," yellow to storage, white to donate, pink to go with one of the "children." All in code and placed strategically to go unnoticed so our father wouldn't feel displaced.

It was the dust and grime as I opened cabinets shut since my mother became ill that nearly screamed to me of my mother's last five years. She never would have tolerated such disarray and abject filth (despite the housekeeper who goes in weekly). My hands and nail beds were coated with a dark grainy soot At the end of the day, we three "children" went downtown to the vault where my sister and I had placed our mother's jewelry merely two days after she was buried. At the time, I argued with my sister that it was "too soon," that it was nearly sacrilege. My sister predicted what I felt was impossible at the time. "Women prey on older widowers like Dad," she said. And given that there is a woman like that already in our father's life, having the jewels in a vault is clearly more than wise.

A woman escorted us three to the vault five floors below ground level, heavy steel and glass redolent of one of the Diehard movies, and then to a room much like one for conferences. We placed the jewelry on the table - yes, making sure it was "still there," but for me, perhaps for all of us, recalling when she'd worn this and that. My brother pointed to a brooch and said that for him and his boys, it was her "signature" piece. It wasn't until later that I recalled her wearing it on the flowing cotton dresses she wore in summer. Honestly, for me, it was that the array of her minimalist collection was once on her flesh in days that were better simply because she was here.

Perhaps it was when the woman placed her hand on my shoulder as she shuttled us out through the heavy glass doors, after we'd put everything back in the vault, that put me over the edge.

"What a sweet family you are," she said.

A poignant statement because, if the truth is rarely pure and never simple, we have not been a sweet family, but we were in those few hours. I have always wanted us three to be a sweet family, and am determined to be if for no other reason but an homage to my mother and just because. If the simple and yes, pure, truth is known, we have all too often been fraught with dysfunction and mistrust. Historically, it was my brother with whom I grew up - the age difference enough between my sister and myself and subsequently the "two of us" (my brother and myself) to create two discrete and disparate families. And now, as the years close in our middle age, we are connected by this one woman whose personal items lie five floors beneath ground level as she lies six feet under. It is not the jewels, dishes, and furnishings that are her legacy.

And so, it was then as we three rode the cavernous elevator up to the main floor when I finally broke down - years of stoicism coming undone. Vulnerability unguarded. The day happened to have been seven months to that day that my mother had died, 15 days that my uncle had died, 17 days that my daughter had gotten engaged, and only six hours that my brother, sister and I had been alone in the apartment for the first time that I recall since we were in grade school. That apartment where we all tried to grow up, where our memories are all so different, where our experiences and histories are what make us, to a large extent, who we are now - and yet like the dots on the "items," we are all painted with different hues despite the same woman's hand that clearly touched us each so differently.

As I wept, my brother's face grew pale with what I perceived as disbelief, and my sister took a step backward. My sister (of late) knows my idiosyncracy of not wanting to be touched or comforted when I am upset. When was the last time, if ever, my brother had seen me that way? His helplessness was palpable as he whispered, "Are you OK?" My surprise when I wailed, "No, I'm not" was the aggregate of the last five years that finally brought me to my knees. It was inarguable even for Oscar Wilde: a pure and simple truth.

In the last five yet fleeting years there has been my marital separation and reconciliation, my mother's illness, my mother's grueling demise and death, my uncle's all too sudden death, my father's impairment and the ease with which he has already turned to another woman after 65 years of marriage to my mother. And now, the sweetness of my daughter's impending wedding day, and my prayers that as she follows life on a new path, there won't be too many stones in the road . My hopes that when the stones appear, she has the strength to kick them away with fierceness and passion. I want my daughter to know even in the moment when she walks down the aisle that love is beautiful, and life is glorious. One truth, as we all know, is that it's not always easy.

Lisa Firestone: Suicide on the Rise -- What We Do

2009-12-03T16:53:04Z

Can we identify people who are at high risk for ending their own lives and get them the help they need? The answer is Yes. We can. It is now possible to more accurately spot these individuals and effectively intervene than it has ever been. This hopeful answer is especially important today in the wake of an increase in suicide.

In fact, last week the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a gradual climb in the suicide rate and in calls to suicide hot lines during the recession years of 2007-2008. There is a popular misconception that a single event -- in this case the recession -- is usually responsible for driving a person to kill him/herself. However, it is certainly true that one triggering event, such as losing one's job or home, may well be "the straw that breaks the camel's back" in a person's lifelong struggle against destructive ways of thinking and ineffective ways of coping with stress. "Myth-busting" is vital to suicide prevention because unfortunately issues of suicide and mental illness are still stigmatized in our society, which has led to the spreading of considerable misinformation about these topics.

A related article in the Wall Street Journal cited the CDC findings and at the same time, called attention to an important key to preventing suicide: "About 90% of those who kill themselves have a mental health disorder, most often depression or substance abuse." This figure has been validated by researchers who have also reported another interesting statistic: only a small number, about 8 percent, of depressed or mood disordered people commit suicide. This leaves approximately 92 percent of depressed individuals who probably will not die by their own hand. In other words, most depressed or substance abusing people do not end up killing themselves.

But what distinguishes the relatively small number of depressed or mood-disordered individuals who will probably kill themselves from those who will probably not? How can we identify the people who are the most likely to end their lives? In our research, we found that among a group of depressed and normal individuals, those who made serious suicide attempts thought differently from those who had never tried to kill themselves. These men and women reported experiencing specific ways of thinking about themselves, others and the world that could be easily distinguished from the way non-suicide attempters were thinking. Therefore, it is extremely important to understand what is going on in the mind of a person who is contemplating suicide.

On a self-report questionnaire, The Firestone Assessment of Self-Destructive Thoughts (FAST), the people who had made previous suicide attempts endorsed negative thoughts or "critical inner voices" that told them they were a burden to their family and friends. "You'd be doing your family a favor if you killed yourself." (This has been labeled "perceived burdensomeness" by researcher Thomas Joiner.)

Suicidal people tend to endorse thoughts on the questionnaire about being alienated from others, "You don't fit in. You don't belong. You just don't matter." (This has been labeled "thwarted belongingness.") In addition, because of past traumatic experiences, many of these people have acquired an ability to dissociate, that is, to cut off their feelings and bodily sensations, including feelings of physical pain. This makes it possible for them to carry out acts of physical violence against themselves. Their loss of feeling is reflected in cold, rational thinking that prevails in the weeks and days leading up to the ultimate act. "How are you going to do it?" "Well, you have to get hold of pills. You have to buy a gun." "You have to be careful. Don't let anyone know what you're planning to do." At the very end, shortly before taking action, the person tends to experience thoughts baiting him or her to "Go on and do it, you coward. You'd better do it. It's the only thing you can do."

How can we recognize when someone we know is thinking in these ways? Are there any other signs that we might be able to observe in friends and family members? Yes, there are definite red flags, including the following: having trouble sleeping; isolation, withdrawal from friends, family or social activities; loss of interest in hobbies, work, school and in one's personal appearance; giving away possessions; making out a will; experiencing a recent personal loss; taking unnecessary risks; and talking about suicide.

Contrary to another popular myth, people who talk about suicide often do go on to kill themselves -- they are not simply trying to get attention. We should take their communications seriously. Frequently, the suicidal person will talk about wanting to kill him or herself or allude to "not being around any more," yet when someone shows concern, he or she may quickly deny that he or she is in distress. This back-and-forth behavior speaks to the ambivalence in suicidal people; a part of them wants to die, but the other part wants to live.

What can we do to help someone who is in the midst of a suicidal crisis and put them in touch with the help they need? The documentary film Understanding and Preventing Suicide provides several guidelines: First, engage the person at risk in a personal way by paying close attention and making the person feel accepted. Convey your feelings of empathy and try to see things from the person's perspective. Second, ask if the person is thinking about suicide; don't be afraid to be direct, yet also be sensitive. Your attitude will give the person permission to talk about suicidal thoughts or plans. Third, ask if the person has a plan, the time frame, and the means, how is he or she going to carry out the plan? Fourth, develop an action plan with the person to get him or her to professional help, that is, arranging a meeting with a counselor or psychotherapist, and accompany him or her there.

This is your only task, to deliver your friend or family member to a person who is qualified to give him the treatment he needs. You can also make arrangements for emergency support if the steps of your plan for action cannot be carried out. For example, have the person or his or her significant other call the local or national suicide hotline 1-800-273-TALK you can also download the brochure "Help Us Save Lives."

On a simple, everyday level, each of us can reach out and act kindly toward everyone we meet. We can smile at people; we can take the time to talk to someone who looks distressed, ask them what's wrong, and we can engage our returning military personnel in friendly conversation.

I am reminded of a man in one of our films who miraculously survived jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. In the film, he describes his last hours before jumping: "Then I heard voices; it was on the bus, 'You must die. You must die'. I began to cry softly in the back of the bus. I began to think, if one person comes up to me and says, 'Are you OK?' or asks if anything's wrong, I'll tell them everything ... I was on the span for over 40 minutes, but no one asked. So I thought 'No one cares, It's time to go.' And I jumped."

As I said earlier, we need to understand that most suicidal individuals, like the man on the bridge, are ambivalent; they are powerfully divided between wanting to live and wanting to die up until the last moment. So it is worthwhile for us to make an effort because many of these people are just waiting to be stopped, they are waiting to be interrupted, they are waiting to be helped. Go ahead and smile at somebody, it doesn't take a lot, it doesn't cost you anything. It could possibly save a life.