Tag Archives: Life Celebrations



Oliver Sacks Says Terminal Cancer Has Never Made Him Feel More Alive

Neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about embracing life in the face of death
Posted on February 25, 2015 by Marissa Abruzzini (Blog Writer, SevenPonds)

A lot can change in a month, as Oliver Sacks found out recently. The 81-year-old writer and neurology professor went from swimming a mile every day to learning he had terminal, inoperable cancer. He says he’ll be lucky to have … Continue reading →

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“Condolence” by Dorothy Parker

Dissecting the strange ways that mourning takes hold of people after the hour of a death.
Posted on January 12, 2015 by Kimberly Lane (Blog Writer, SevenPonds)

Brief and charming and full of a spectacular wit, Dorothy Parker’s “Condolence” is the the kind of poem that you would bring to a funeral or memorial service that is acting as as a life-celebration event. The poem invites readers … Continue reading →

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“It’s being here now that’s important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one.”

- George Harrison
Posted on March 18, 2014 by Zoë Byrne (Editor in Chief, SevenPonds)

More in “A Rite of Passage”: ”Waking or asleep, / Thou of death must deem / Things more true and deep / Than we mortals dream, / Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?” “If we … Continue reading →

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It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called Life.

-Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent
Posted on January 7, 2014 by Kimberly Lane (Blog Writer, SevenPonds)
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“Notes for a Story of a Man who Will Not Die Alone,” by Dave Eggers

Eggers' imagining of how one man flouts tradition and makes his death into a grand party
Posted on June 29, 2012 by Liz Matsushita (Blog Writer, SevenPonds)

Dave Eggers is something of a San Francisco hometown hero, if literary figures can be heroes. His novels, including A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, are well-known and critically-acclaimed. He founded McSweeney’s, a publishing house with a respected quarterly literary … Continue reading →

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A Glimpse into Contemporary Iranian Passing

Remembrance events in modern Iranian culture
Posted on April 12, 2012 by Antal Polony (Blog Writer, SevenPonds)

As an Iranian-American, I spent the first five years of my life in Tehran before moving permanently to the US. I have experienced both the traditional Islamic Iranian funeral in Iran and the contemporary ceremony in America. Despite the fact … Continue reading →

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