I'm Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

It seems like every family laws I've experienced turned out like that scene in the comedy day

trippers.

The two sisters clean out their deceased mother's apartment and loudly bicker over who gets

ownership of her TV and pain pills.

Hilarious but serious.

Grieving the death of a relative or friend is hard work.

Work made even more difficult by the sudden and complex task of interring a body and

its belongings.

Deliving our thrust into the minutia of funeral proceedings, caterers, florists, lawyers,

movers, and estate professionals, all the while, hearts are heavy.

Some people, by choice or pure necessity, abandon the task altogether.

Fortunately, on occasion, we have help.

My thoughtful and fastidious friend, Dana, is completing training to serve as an end of

life doula.

Another friend, Pam, sits bedside with hospice patients as a volunteer.

She describes her work as existing in the sacred territory of dying.

They both are empathetic and compassionate spirits.

Today's intriguing poem illustrates the difficult task of processing those unreconciled feelings

when laying the dead to rest.

For many, that difficulty is tied up with having little time to grieve or with putting off

the shock of loss, attendant to those painful memories.

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