From a Hindu perspective, you are born as what you need to deal with, and if you just try and push it away, whatever it is, it's got you.

Working with the dying is like being a midwife for this great rite of passage of death. Just as a midwife helps a being take their first breath, you help a being take their last breath.

When I used to perform weddings, the image I always had was the image of a triangle, in which there are two partners and then there is this third force, this third being, that emerges out of the interaction of these two. The third one is the one that is the shared awareness that lies behind the two of them.

I feel vulnerable because my mind - because of the stroke, my mind doesn't focus. And then I feel vulnerable because I don't understand the world around me.

Strong families serve society by bringing forth healthy children and maturing young adults, by being a rich source of a compassion for sick members, of support for others in time of crisis and of care for the elderly and the dying.

In her second career as a minister, my mother defied a legacy of chauvinism to become a leader of our community, overseeing a church that served as a hub, offering parenting classes, a food pantry, after-school programming, and - in the wake of Hurricane Katrina - a lifeline to those ravaged by loss.

Death is the mother of Beauty; hence from her, alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams and our desires.

The New Zealand sense of humor is tough and realistic. Jokes are not surreal; they are about life and death and tough decisions.