When my ninety-year-old mother-in-law, Estelle, died in 2004 I was completely inexperienced and uneducated with the process of dying. I went through a “trial by fire” when my wife and I sat with her mother for the final six days of her life. While I was not prepared for what was to follow, there was never any question as to what our course would be. We were determined to stay by her side no matter how long it took, and we found ourselves completely open to experiencing the death process — or, in this case, the beauty of the passing.

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The following accounts relate four separate incidents involving close calls — situations that could easily have killed me, had it not been for some higher hand intervening. Some call it Karma; some call it God’s Will; some, blind luck. Decide for yourself.

I was 16 in the summer of 1967, living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Early one morning, my friend Oscar came to pick me up for a camping trip. We had planned to ride our bicycles to the foot of the Sandia Mountains, take the tram to the top, hike along the Crest to the North Peak, and pitch…

As a boy growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I earned extra money by doing yard work in my neighborhood, our own yard included. I took special pride in my attention to detail: a careful snip here, the meticulous weeding there. The lawns on our street had my “touch,” and I was complimented for such. This was in the days of push mowers, rakes, and clippers — a far cry from the gasoline-powered machinery of today’s typical gardener service my wife calls “Blow & Go.”

Whereas I used to take my time in doing a good job, the “Blow &…

One of the first ways we are taught about positive and negative space is in the kerning, or spacing, of letters in a word. Letters can be jammed tightly together or have wide spacing with lots of “air” between each. The positive space is the body of the letter itself, and the negative space is between the letters. Without the negative space, we wouldn’t see any letters — no space between, no openings in the letters such as O, B, and R — just a solid blob. So, it’s the negative space that defines the shape and identity of everything.

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Man thinks he rules the earth. Not so. The real power, the crowned ruler in complete control, is water. Everything is reliant upon and affected by the combination of two atoms of hydrogen combined with one of oxygen. How that molecule reacts to the changing temperatures creates the earth’s weather patterns. The forces of ice, rain, and flooding continually shape and reshape the surface of the globe and affect the lives of every living thing. We work full time to protect ourselves from water, but no matter what we do, water wins out in the end.

Throughout history, our…

I grew up with a fairly good idea of the value of money. It didn’t grow on trees — that much I knew, or if it did, certainly not on my parents’ trees. I had an allowance for which I performed many chores: cutting the lawn, watering the yard, cleaning my room, washing dishes, and sometimes ironing my own shirts and pants. Working was not foreign to me. Having a paper route, doing other people’s yards, and selling Christmas cards door-to-door earned me money to buy records, a bicycle, a basketball, and a Heath Kit radio. For the most part…

Somewhere I heard that there are only one-hundred different people-types in the world. “The waiter is the spitting image of Uncle Henry, don’t you think?” “She looks just like Barbra Streisand, but has Mom’s eyes.” One-hundred different people. One-hundred different molds. Are there also only that many different sets of circumstances, experiences?

The man sitting across from me eating scrambled eggs at the lunch counter in diner has blood-shot eyes. He has been up all night making musket balls from molten lead in preparation for the battle at Lexington. Many men will die today. Will he be one of them…

I used to feel that the potential to create is in every child, and that the only thing missing in those that do not draw, paint, write, or play music is opportunity. Had there been a loving, nurturing household which provided the necessary instruction, materials, and encouragement, I felt that the child would have emerged an artist.

My sister and I grew up in one of the richest environments one could imagine. Both of our parents were to blame: Mom at her drafting table and easel, and Dad in the darkroom. As far back as I can remember, we…