Big Sue, Little Sue

As a result of asthma, I have felt very close to dying on several occasions in my life, and I have also had many incidents that mirror those of people having near-death experiences. In my case though, I never came close enough to death to have a near-death experience, and when I was having the experiences, I was almost always very much alive. I had the flu when one experience happened, but to the best of my knowledge, I wasn't ill enough for that to have played a part in what happened. On that Continue Reading

Shortly before the stroke that would lead to my mother's death, she told me that my dad had been to visit her. She was adamant it was real, and I didn't want to push the matter, assuming it was vascular dementia at work, even though the rest of her conversation seemed entirely coherent and lucid. I dismissed it because my father had died four years earlier. If I were having that same conversation with her now, I wouldn't be so dismissive, especially since I have heard my mother's voice recently, Continue Reading

When I was in my teens, I loved the film Harvey, with James Stewart. The story is about a guy whose best friend is a six foot, three and a half inch tall, invisible white rabbit. I told my friend Big Sue at college about the film and she, in turn, let her friends on her catering course know about it. Her classmates decided to adopt Harvey for themselves, setting a place for him at every meal, making sure he had somewhere to sit in class, and that no one bumped into, or walked through him. They Continue Reading