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A group of my friend Sandy's friends was visiting with her in the last week of her life. We were all sitting with her in her upstairs Family Rm when she points to thin air and says there is a tall woman with short hair standing there and there is a small dog with her. She then says that the woman is sitting next to her. She then kept on saying, "I don't understand." To which I would ask what don't you understand, with no reply from her. She wan't talking to us, she was asking a question of the tall woman with short hair.

Four days before Sandy passed away I was talking to her about asking for forgiveness very late at night. I felt thirsty so I was going down the stairs to get some water, when I slipped and fell on the stairs that I had gone up and down numerous times. I am very careful about stairs because of my size and weight, I hold onto the rail, put one foot solidly down before I move the other down. So I go down stairs in an almost crab like fashion. What I remember is that I didn't have my complete weight on the foot when I slipped. It was as if something moveable was under my foot that caused me to slip. Something didn't like me talking to Sandy about forgiveness, I thought it might have been Sandys deceased Jewish mother who would not tolerate any discussion about religion except Judaism in her house. Or it could have been something a bit more malignant. Whatever it was it did scare me.

In the final extremis of Sandy's life I was the only one who was with her when she died. I was talking to her when I finally said, "Sandy you do what you need to do," within 2 minutes she slowly stopped breathing and was gone. Leaving the Hospice I talked to a Priest for a bit about this not being my first rodeo with death and that the only thing that is important in this life is out capacity to love where upon the Priest started to cry. On the way home and to this very day I have this image that Sandys family all the way back to Abraham smiles upon me out of gratitude for standing up for one of their own out of friendship when I was under no obligation to do so. When I got home I lay down on my bed and stared out into infinity, I felt like I could just go out there and never come back. That that was the line between life and death, finally I decided I was still alive and breathing so I came back to this world.