We Don’t Have to Feel Alone

Before we could read, most of us were read to. And we loved it. Just as we still love “story time;” even if it’s sitting with someone at or after work, listening to stories. We still love it.

Somewhere along the line we learned that reading was something serious that we did by ourselves. But it can be other things, too.

Go to a reading. Shut your eyes, sit back, listen to the author read the words he wrote.

Get the CD, or download the audio book, or watch a video, of me reading most of the poems in My Father, Humming. Let me do all the work of making it make sense. All you have to do is listen.

Come, if you can, hear me read from My Father, Humming. Sit in a room with a group of other people, and listen. I am telling you a story—my story about my father’s decline with Alzheimer’s, and how I learned to deal with his death. But I’m also telling your story.

My words are talking to each of you, individually; they are also talking to all of you—about what we have in common, what we share as human beings. What better than to do that together, to be part of the community in that room. To be reaffirmed by all that peace and love and positivity, in the aftermath of losing a loved one.

We are all stronger—happier and more peaceful, even free—if we face the hardest things in life together. We don’t have to feel alone.