Life…for every one of us, it’s a puzzle made up of different pieces, different moments. As that famed song in Rent says, there are “five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes” in every year that we live, so basically, that’s a whole lotta moments. For the most part it’s small, mundane moments; brushing our teeth, taking out the trash, traveling to and from work, school and other obligatory destinations. But, there are those few moments in our lives, both good and bad, that are truly life-defining and create us into the unique individuals we are.

A few of the good; getting accepted into and graduating from college, meeting our future spouse/partner, our wedding day and the birth of our children. And then the bad; our first heartbreak, parents’ divorces, our first experience of rejection from a college or job. There is, however, one inevitable part of life that we all must deal with at some point, and which I’ll venture out to say is the suckiest part of life; death. There is nothing quite like losing someone you love. It hits you at your very core, turns your world upside down, and makes life suddenly seem so REAL. For me, this jarring, life-changing moment happened just over a year ago when my dear grandmother lost her battle with ovarian cancer. Read More »

Early one morning a year ago in Vlissingen, Netherlands, a 21- year old named Ruth de Visser died in her sleep finally succumbing to the ravaging forces of Hodgkins disease. She was my best friend.

Less than 48 hours later, I found myself back in the States, walking across the stage at GWU to receive my BA.

It’s impossible to describe my emotions at that moment. I was simultaneously overjoyed to graduate and heartbroken to the point of physical pain from the loss of my friend. I don’t remember the entire weekend actually — only that it was punctuated with meltdowns and many out-of-body experiences.

I felt so alone. Part of this was due to the innate solitary nature of the grieving process — and nothing I write here can really change that feeling. The other part, however, was figuring out how to explain to my loved ones what I needed from them. Initially, I was too exhausted to do this — I pushed everyone away, including my poor boyfriend, and walked around like a lost zombie. At the time I wished that there was a way for everyone to just “get” what I was feeling. Read More »

It’s as vivid today as it was when it happened five years ago: Chris and I bodysurfing on an abandoned beach just outside of Acapulco and Stephanie looking at us with wonder from the shore. He and I would get slammed, and slammed again, then come up smiling from sand-filled ear to water-logged ear. Just before going in, we looked out into the vast horizon. The sky was clear blue. There were no clouds in sight. The ocean held us in its wake. Suddenly, we both gasped at the same time: a flying stingray briefly jumped out of the water just fifteen feet away.

“Did you see that?” he asked me.

“That was so cool,” I said.

Christopher Cady was my best friend’s boyfriend. He and Stephanie — like myself — had a real case of wanderlust. With no one else could I share my travel stories and feel completely understood. Only they understood why I would want to attend college in Maine, a continent and ocean away from my home in Hawaii: for the pure challenge and unpredictability.

Steph and I lived vicariously through each other, traversing the globe and telling each other tale after wondrous tale. Their travels brought them from Maine to Mexico to Taos to Central America to Boston, but culminated abruptly in Chamonix one fateful afternoon in January 2004. Chris had prepared an engagement ring before their trip. He didn’t get a chance to give it to her because, despite the storm that was brewing that late afternoon, he took an off-piste route and went missing. Read More »

I’m risking my life to get this out to you. Seriously. According to a recent New York Times article, blogging can cause death. Don’t believe me? Well, here’s the evidence:

Two weeks ago, 60-year-old technology blogger, Richard Shaw, died of a heart attack. Only a few months earlier, in December, another tech blogger, 50-year-old Marc Orchant, died of a massive coronary. Also in December, the well-known blogger, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack.

I told ya. Of course, there is no official diagnosis that blogging caused these incidents, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised. Blogging can be majorly stressful. According to the article, “bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.” Read More »

On the afternoon of January 22, Heath Ledger was found dead in his New York City apartment.

A week later, I’m still unsure which is worse – that a tremendously talented young actor died, that I probably learned about it before his family, or that his family heard about it from the media, the same way as me.

From the moment the news was released, nearly every media outlet seemed to toss journalistic integrity out of the window in favor of reporting rumors and speculation. We saw pictures of Heath’s body carried out of the apartment in a body bag, TMZ had a live stream outside of the Frank Campbell funeral home on Fifth Avenue, similar to their feed outside of the Britney Spear’s court hearings (after many of their readers protested the funeral home feed, TMZ finally took it down), and Tinsley Mortimer, a New York socialite, was speculated to have used Heath’s sudden passing as a photo op, getting her nails done at a salon next to the funeral home and not so close to her own home.

There is no glamour in dying. Upon death, there should be no indignity. Yet at every turn, the stories ran wild – Heath Ledger died in Mary Kate Olsen’s apartment; pills were STREWN around his room, Heath was depressed and had a drug problem.

With celebrity comes endless scrutiny, yet in life, Heath Ledger was spared from a lot of it because of his low key profile away from the glare of Hollywood. But his death was another story entirely, and it wasn’t just paparazzi outside of the building. New outlets were there right next to the gossip photographers, covering the coverage of the event just to get a burning headline. Read More »

Sometimes I look up dead people on Facebook. Not, say, Thomas Edison or Washington Irving or George Washington Carver. If they had Facebook, I wouldn’t be here– but that’s a different story.

But maybe I’m watching the six o’clock news and there’s a story on how Randy Rappelstein, a junior at Rutgers, crashed his RAV-4 into a lightpole. Hop on over to Facebook, type in Randy’s name, and boom: a picture of him at his Sig Ep formal with his date cropped out. A remnant of his life when death seemed an abstract possibility.

It’s a creepy habit of mine, yes, but the Facebook has emerged as a virtual graveyard for such real - life situations, and it’s hard not to pay attention to the amount of dead matter on the site. Read More »

This is one cat you may not want curling up next to you.

Oscar, a two year old stray that was adopted as a kitten by the third floor dementia unit of the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, reportedly has an uncanny ability to tell when a patient is about to die.

In over 25 observed cases, Oscar the Death Cat (they’re calling him that, not me) goes into a patient’s room about two hours before they kick the bucket. Sometimes he even sits down next to them.

One doctor was “convinced of Oscar’s talent” during his 13th case. A patient the doctor was tending to showed many common signs of approaching death, but Oscar wouldn’t stay inside the room. The doctor thought the feline’s correct prediction streak was over, until 10 hours later. When the patient passed away a few hours after doctors expected, Oscar was right there with her. Read More »