Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart. ~Eleanor Roosevelt Melanie Hack Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend Read an excerpt now TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James

As profiled on CNN, for nearly four years (well, since 2006), 25-year-old Eva Markvoort of New Westminster, Canada, narrated a Blog about her battle with cystic fibrosis…an incurable disease that caused mucus to accumulate in her lungs. Even as her health declined when it appeared unlikely that she would receive a second double lung transplant, […]

Death leaves you no time for game playing or second-guessing. Death leaves you no time to mess around with things you need to say to each other…so go for it! There is no right or wrong way to do this. Be angry, upset, weepy, and giddy…whatever you feel. There are no shoulds in this process. […]

From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything, That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him, Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odor and in hue, Could make me any […]

Lynn, while working as an ICU nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital, had a patient who had been in a coma for several weeks: “While in Charlie’s room doing his daily care, I would talk to him about the weather or the daily news, or mention a movie I saw. Sometimes I teased him about what […]

Many people who appear to be in deep coma (a state of unresponsiveness from which an individual has not yet been aroused) are not. Although their eyes are closed, they can hear what is being said. While one person described as being in a coma may be totally unaware of his/her state or environment, another […]

These I, singing in spring, collect for lovers, (For who but I should understand lovers and all their sorrow and joy? And who but I should be the poet of comrades?) Collecting I traverse the garden the world, but soon I pass the gates, Now along the pond-side, now wading in a little, fearing not […]

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect The total sky almost without defect, And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver, Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone, And yet not out by any brook or river, But up by roots to bring dark foliage on. The trees that have it […]

This is my absolute favorite time of the year. Spring—freshness and vibrancy, the sense of hope and new life. And if you planted something in memory of your beloved, it’s the yearly budding of memories and blossoming of love you have with a deceased loved one. Go for a walk in nature and breathe deeply, […]

“In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.” ~Kahlil Gibran Melanie Hack Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend Read an excerpt now TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James