Alison's Gift

When my sister-in-law had terminal-stage breast cancer, she and my brother read a book that changed their lives.

Alison’s Gift is the true story of a seven-year old killed by an air bag in a slow-speed collision. Her mother, Beth Knox, knew that when Alison was disconnected from life-support, she did not want a mortician to take charge. She wanted to bring Alison home, continue caring for her, share her grief, and give Alison’s brothers, grandparents, and friends time to say goodbye.

The hospital said it could not release Alison to her mother’s care. They eventually allowed an undertaker to transport the body home. As Beth learned later, the hospital was wrong; she had the legal right to take Alison home in the van in which she had driven her daughter to school each day.

For the next three days, Alison lay on her own bed. Friends and family members talked and sang to her, prayed and meditated, or just sat quietly, saying goodbye. Several of Alison’s Waldorf School classmates came, and even though some parents were apprehensive about letting them see a body, the children seemed quite comfortable. Spending time with their friend, far from being frightening or creepy, allowed them so experience death as a real and normal part of life.

As a result of this experience, Beth founded Crossings: Caring for Our Own at Death, a national non-profit educational organization. In workshops around the country, she teaches people how to care for a body at home, choose a final resting place, and understand the applicable laws in each state. (For a 3-minute Frontline You Tube story on home funerals featuring Beth Knox, click here.)

Just as the home birth movement has given families more control over birth, the home death movement, which Beth helped found, encourages families to take more control over the other big transition, returning death care to its rightful place as a last sacred family act of love.

My brother and sister-in-law, Bill and Diane Manahan, liked this idea. They ordered a home funeral kit from Crossings. In addition to instructions for after-death care, the kit contained essential oil of lavender for washing the body, a length of white silk cloth to drape over it, and candles. (Although this kit is no longer sold, a Handbook for Home Funeral Care is available for purchase or as a free pdf download at http://www.crossings.com/.)

My spouse Becky Bohan and I were with Diane when she died. I helped bathe and dress her body, hold a vigil, accompany her body to the crematorium, and bring her ashes back home for her life celebration three days later. Becky had a mystical experience at the moment of Diane's death and a joyful visit from Diane several hours later. These profound experiences led us to write Living Consciously, Dying Gracefully: A Journey with Cancer and Beyond, which has won six regional and national book awards and affected readers in ways similar to the impact Alison’s Gift had on our family.

Last month, when Becky and I were in Maryland, we spent an afternoon with Alison's mother. We liked Beth Knox immensely. She is an ideal home funeral educator -- warm, practical, visionary, and passionate about the environment. She told us about the remarkable deaths last year of her mother and her husband’s father, who died peacefully at home, and who requested and received a home funeral.

Following Beth’s lead, our local Minnesota Threshold Network offered a free public information session on home deaths and green, eco-friendly burials in Minneapolis this month. Resources, including Alison’s Gift, were available.

If readers of this blog know of someone who is interested in caring for their own at death, please extend an invitation to read this inspiring book, join the Crossings listserv, and learn from the experiences of Alison and her extraordinary mother.

Nancy

Book Buzz!

What's the best thing that can happen to a book?

Buzz!

Many a small title has burst onto the best seller list because of a groundswell of interest. How does that happen? An outstanding book? Inspiration? Perspiration? Luck?

Recently 15 authors from Beaver's Pond Press met at the Edina Public Library to share ideas for generating groundswells of interest in our books.
Several suggestions emerged:

• Always carry copies of your book with you. Hold one in your hand whenever possible, for example, as you wait to board an airplane. Ask the flight attendant to show it and announce that the author is on board with signed copies. Sales can happen anywhere. And once you're in the air, you don't have to charge sale's tax!
• Contribute to blogs.
• Check out on-line resources for Building the Buzz, e.g. Writing-World.com.
• Contact local newspapers and cable TV to pitch a story idea. They want more than just "local author publishes book." They are looking for an interesting or informative angle to snag readers.
• Send review copies to the media. Alternatively, you can send sell sheets or postcards asking if they would like a review copy so you don't waste freebies on people who aren't interested.
• Set up an appealing website and maximize traffic to your site. This is a whole topic in and of itself... especially important for those who are not tech-savvy.
• Set up readings and presentations at bookstores and libraries. A marketing rep can help you, or you can do it on your own by calling and visiting bookstores that might be interested in your book. Try to get media attention before the event.
• Think outside the bookstore! Give presentations to organizations connected to your topic. The people who attend are more likely to buy your book.
• Write articles for magazines (paper or on-line) and get magazines to excerpt parts of your book.
• Be generous in giving away copies to people who could be good promoters of your book.

Meeting with other authors is a great way to get ideas and support. Once a book is in print, don't put up your feet and wait for readers to discover your title. The ongoing creative work of creating buzz has just begun!!!

On the Move!

A literary agent has agreed to represent Living Consciously, Dying Gracefully to mainstream publishers. We are honored and thrilled by her belief that Diane's story deserves a larger publisher and a national audience. She advises waiting a few months until the economy starts to move in a positive direction before making any moves. Like most businesses, publishers are hunkering down right now.

Meanwhile, we continue to promote the book. We recently shipped a boxful (52 count) to Michigan psychotherapist Susie Symons, whose story about after-death communication with Diane appears in Chapter 19 of Living Consciously, Dying Gracefully. She will give the book to friends and patients as appropriate. We are grateful for Susie's continuing support.

Nancy has been on the phone and emailing up a storm trying to set up presentations in the Washington, D.C. area for our visit in April and early May. Thanks for Bill, we have arranged with the American Holistic Medical Association to deliver books to their spring conference at the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) center in Virginia Beach, home of the Edgar Cayce Institute. We are excited to get Diane's story into the hands of integrative physicians and people interested in metaphysical studies. The huge A.R.E. Bookstore has agreed to carry Living Consciously, Dying Gracefully.

Our application for a booth was accepted by the Bloomington Art Center's annual Writers' Festival and Book Fair on March 21 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The festival will have lots of authors, books, and workshops. It's a chance for the public to meet and talk to authors and to get signed copies at a good price. We look forward to being there and doing a ten-minute reading. You are all invited!

Sharpening Our Focus

When we set up this blog over two years ago, we envisioned it as a place to share what's happening with our book, Living Consciously, Dying Gracefully: A Journey with Cancer and Beyond, as well as issues and ideas dealing with end of life and green burials.

Over time, the blog has morphed into more of a personal journal with occasional references to our book and end-of-life issues. While straying off the purpose has its merits, we feel it is time to refocus.

Therefore we have decided to use a second blog--nanbec.blogspot.com--to share our travel stories, musings, and personal adventures.

We'll keep this blog for more book-related topics, including reports of what's happening with the Minnesota Threshold Network, a group of people interested in family-directed, natural, end-of-life transitions. We'll delete the more personal entries from this blog, but they will be available on the nanbec blog.

For those of you who receive this blog automatically via email, we will add you to our nanbec blog email list. We'll keep you signed up for this blog, too, but let us know if you prefer to receive just one or the other. We are sensitive to bulking up your email box and will be happy to delete you from the email list if you so desire.

So, without further ado, we invite you to read the first new entry in the blog, nanbec@blogspot.com!

Book News

A year ago when we reprinted Living Consciously, Dying Gracefully: A Journey with Cancer, we decided to print an extra thousand copies to give away to hospices, cancer centers, and other groups that seemed appropriate. (Thanks, Carolyn Miller, our friend who put the idea into our heads!!) We have been rather slow to get books out, but late this fall we have really stepped up our activities.

In November we gave 350 books to participants of the Positive Aging conference at the University of Minnesota and sponsored by the Center for Spirituality and Healing. The next day we delivered 200 books to the U of M Women’s Health Center and the U of M Breast Center.

Three days before we left for Mexico, we realized that instead of sending just flyers to the Evidence-Based Complementary Cancer Care Conference in Florida to be held in January, we could send the actual books! Rather than pack our bags for Mexico, we stuffed and attached labels to 260 books, packed them up, and hauled them to the Post Office.

It feels very satisfying to be able to put Diane's story into the hands of people who might not otherwise see the book.

We are not, however, giving up on sales!

We have joined five other writers from Beaver’s Pond Press who sell books at various venues. Dubbed “The Color of Authors,” we’re an eclectic bunch, spanning the range of award-winning mysteries, body/mind/spirit , health, and children’s books. (Pictured left are Anne Pritchard, Becky, Nancy, Marilyn Jax, Frank Silva, and Colleen Baldrica. Not pictured is Lynne Eldridge.)

On Saturday, December 6, the day before we left for Mexico, we spent the afternoon at Buon Giorno, an Italian restaurant and wine bar in Mendota Heights. We loved being surrounded by bottles of fine vino from Italy and we even did a little tasting.

“The Color of Authors” is carrying on without us (but displaying our books) while we are gone. We look forward to rejoining them in February.

Becky & Nancy

John, a Light on My Path

In the workshops and presentation that Nancy & I give based on our book Living Consciously, Dying Gracefully: A Journey with Cancer and Beyond, we often ask participants: What makes a good death?

The answers include no pain, time to say good-bye, finishing one’s business, having those you love by your side, being free of anxiety, and being at peace.

These elements can be achieved when one is dying of disease and has the time to prepare consciously for the end, as Diane Manahan did. Her extraordinarily good death is one reason her story is so inspiring.

But what if a person does not have that time?

Last month an old friend from high school, John Osnes, stepped off the curb in Los Angeles one night, and within minutes he was lying on the pavement, having been beaten up and then run over in a road rage incident.

How could his death ever be considered a good death? That is was quick? That he didn’t linger in pain? Those aren’t very satisfactory answers. I don’t know that there are any.

A sudden death may be hardest on the loved ones, such as John’s beloved sister, Kris. How could this have happened? How can one go on when everything is changed?

Quickly come all the arrangements, the phone calls, the obituary, the finances, the notifications, the reality within the unreal situation. In a way, the tasks help loved ones get through the first few days and through the shock, but not through the grief. That will last a long, long time.

I am grateful to John Osnes for a friendship of long ago that was more important to me than I realized at the time. In our small rural Midwestern town, he was a gay teenager. He bravely wore his hair longer than any other guy in Madelia, sang beautifully, played the piano brilliantly, but was harassed by his schoolmates. I was a lesbian teenager, in love for the first time-- with his sister Kris. For a couple of years, John and I formed an unspoken bond in our isolation. Once, over pizza in the nearby “city” of Mankato, we confided our sexuality and our heartaches openly to each other.

Thank you, John, for who you were . . . and for being a light on my path.

Becky

P.S. For more information about John Osnes, visit http://www.johnosnes.com/.

Yes, Readers, We Married

Yes, readers, we married.

September 3, 2008, on the 14th anniversary of Nancy moving into my home, we exchanged marriage vows in the enormous rotunda of San Francisco City Hall. We thank all the Californians who made it possible, including my sister Vicki and her husband Ric, our official witnesses.

Even before saying “I do,” we felt an unexpected, delightful consequence of marriage: people’s happiness for us. From the young San Francisco car rental agent to the middle-aged couple from Ohio behind us on the bus, from waiters to Bay Area friends and family members, people shared in our joy. Of course, we were beaming so much that they may not have been able to help themselves…but still, it was is amazing how such deep affection bubbles up from people when someone gets married.

Another impact is that we are now part of an official social structure. We are in-laws in each other’s families. Our relatives know what to call us when making introductions. Ric coaches Nancy on strategies for coping with the Bohan clan (don’t mention peaches!). The legal binds make for stronger familial ties.

Now that we’re back in Minnesota, a state that does not recognize our marriage, a bit of the glow is off. Yet, when we tell people we recently got married in California, they break into grins and congratulate us. Maybe some of the folks we tell don’t approve of same-sex marriage, but good manners—and perhaps a deep-in-the-bone response to such a basic social institution—win out.

I find that I want to share the news of our nuptials with everyone. Not only are we showered with good wishes, questions about the wedding, and requests to see our rings. Coming-out-as-married also helps raise consciousness. We are part of a sea-change, and bit by bit, the power of prejudice is evaporating before our eyes—and before the reality of the hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples getting married every place we’re allowed to -- in California, Massachusetts, Canada, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and hopefully, soon, even in Minnesota.

In that case, perhaps Nancy and I will do it all over again!

Becky