The Second Fool

The Second Fool

Death Dialogues #4 Second Fool: “Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?” First Fool: “…a gravemaker: the houses that he makes last till doomsday.” from from Hamlet I sat on the floor across from the vet who had just put down our 12-year-old,...
Death Dialogues #3

Death Dialogues #3

Dis?honorable Deaths My call echoed in the room where my friend lay, unable to answer. He had cinched a belt around his neck and lowered himself to cut off the flow of oxygen to his brain. It may have been to see if it would intensify the sexual pleasure as he aroused...
Death Dialogues #2

Death Dialogues #2

Storyteller and psychologist Kim Bateman continues her series. The Uninvited Mourner For the last 26 years from May to October, Jack has been fishing the Truckee River in our backyard at least twice a week. He has been there in his waders in rushing spring run-off,...
Death Dialogues #1

Death Dialogues #1

Storyteller and psychologist Kim Bateman begins her series Death Dialogues with this essay. I Pledge Allegiance to the Republic of Not-Dying Hap has been wrestling with lung cancer for many years. And by wrestling, I mean more of a dance, where one is acting and...
Imagination Infusion #2

Imagination Infusion #2

Imaginative Healing I heard this story around a campfire in Carpinteria, CA in 1997. I was unable to find a written record of it so I am re-telling it here to the best of my memory. In the early 1990s a nineteen year old woman of Mexican descent lived in a small,...