Lenore is recovering from the loss of her cherished dead deer bone, which she enjoyed but which  resulted in considerable expulsion of repulsive matter from both ends of her body.

  January 13, 2008 – Thomas Merton says that we can only fully be said to be alive when we become plainly conscious of the real meaning of our own existence, that is to say when we experience something of the fulness of intelligence, freedom, creativity and spirituality that are actualized within ourselves.
  A friend asked me this week, in a sad conversation, when he had stopped being alive, by which he meant when did he stop doing what he loved, and surrendered the idea of hope, change and fulfillment.
  I said I didn’t known when people stopped being alive, but that it often had little to do with the flesh. I have often talked and written about the first death, when many of us surrender to fear and hopelessness, and give up on the idea that we experience the fulness of our dreams and spirit. A farmer told me recently that he had given up on work, and was heading to a trailer where it was warm. He was done, he told me, with hoping for things. I am not, I told him, and hope to never be.
   Another friend wrote me that she was frightened by the economy, and by the prospect of losing her job, and had given up on her notions of being an artist. The idea just died, she said, when there was so much trouble in the world.
  In hospice, I often see the second death, when the body wears out. Most of us consider this the real death, but I don’t. The first death, the loss of hope, the experience of being alive,  is in many ways sadder to me. We do have choices. We can challenge ourselves, as Merton suggests,  to be better, be fulfilled, liberate our innermost spirits and fight for the idea that we can live our lives.