Of Consciousness, the Brain, and the Soul

(Image from scitechdaily)

Much as UFO skeptics claim that there is no definitive evidence of alien life, so do most scientists believe that consciousness does not exist outside the human brain. Another way of framing the latter proposition is that there is no proof that the soul exists.

American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray thinks that enough evidence has accumulated to question the brain-only view of human consciousness. [bold added]

the most robust, hardest-to-ignore evidence comes from a phenomenon called terminal lucidity: a sudden, temporary return to self-awareness, memory and lucid communication by a person whose brain is no longer functional usually because of advanced dementia but occasionally because of meningitis, brain tumors, strokes or chronic psychiatric disorders.

Terminal lucidity can last from a few minutes to a few hours. In the most dramatic cases, people who have been unable to communicate or even recognize their spouses or children for years suddenly become alert and exhibit their former personalities, complete with reminiscences and incisive questions. It is almost always followed by complete mental relapse and death within a day or two.

The phenomenon didn’t have a name until 2009, but case studies reach back to detailed clinical descriptions from the 19th century. Hospices, palliative-care centers, and long-term care wards for dementia patients continued to observe the condition during the 20th century but usually treated it as a curious episode that didn’t warrant a write-up. With the advent of social media, reports began to accumulate. We now have a growing technical literature and a large, systematic sample compiled by Austrian psychologist Alexander Batthyány.

Two features of the best-documented cases combine to meet Sagan’s standard: The subjects suffered from medically verified disorders that made their brains incapable of organized mental activity; and multiple observers, including medical personnel, recorded the lucidity.

A strict materialist explanation must posit a so-far-unknown capability of the brain. But the brain has been mapped for years, and a great deal is known about the functions of its regions. Discovering this new feature would be akin to finding a way that blood can circulate when the heart stops pumping.

Charles Murray analogizes the current state of consciousness science to the late 19th century problems with Newton's physics that required the creation of a new theoretical model:

I see the strict materialistic view of consciousness as being in roughly the same fix as Newtonian physics was in 1887, when the Michelson-Morley experiment proved that the speed of light doesn’t behave as Newton’s laws said it should. It took 18 years before Einstein’s theory of special relativity accommodated the anomaly.

We are identifying anomalies in the materialist position that must eventually lead to a paradigm shift. Science will have to acknowledge that even though conventional neuroscience explains much about consciousness under ordinary circumstances, something else can come into play under the extreme conditions of imminent death.

The implications are momentous. Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow observed that for a scientist trying to explain creation, the verification of the big-bang theory “ends like a bad dream”: “As he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” Neuroscientists who have been trying to explain consciousness may have to face their own bad dream: coming to terms with evidence for the human soul.

The 21st century was predicted to be the century of the Brain or when the war on cancer would be won. But the century of "soul science"? That wasn't on my bingo card.

"A Good Death"

Shelli Feder

What does compassionate care look like at the end of life? What does it mean to have a “good death” today?

Yale School of Nursing (YSN) Associate Professor Shelli Feder:

What we think is a good death has changed over the decades. There is no single good way of dying. It’s really about what matters most to that person and how they want to die and where they want to die and what they want to do before they die. Part of providing good hospice care is trying our best to make sure that that happens.

One of the most beautiful things about hospice is about reframing end of life and living with a critical or a life-limiting illness. Oftentimes by the time patients get to hospice, which too often is too late, they’re tired. They have been in and out of the hospital; they’ve been stuck a gazillion times for IVs; they’ve undergone tests; and they’re tired of all that intervention and invasiveness. Hospice is an opportunity to sit down and talk about what matters most to you right now. We can’t change the fact that you’re dying. But what we can change is how you’re feeling in this moment. That’s the definition of dying well.

I have come to realize that dying is about letting go, which sounds trite because what is dying but letting go of life? But prior to that final act one has to let go of dreams unfulfilled, wishes for one's children, legacies that won't be completed. Once one releases oneself from those burdens, the feeling can be liberating. Then, perhaps, you are ready to go.

Don Peter

Don Peter (1938-2025)

Donald Gene Peter was a bear of a man. 87 when he died last month, he still looked the part of the offensive lineman who pushed aside linebackers for Stanford. We were on the Farm in different decades--he in the '50's and I in the '70's--but they may as well have been in different centuries. When Don played, Stanford's mascot was an Indian, the school was part of the Pacific Coast Conference (one of the predecessors to the Pac-8), and face masks on helmets were not required.

High school and college football was just the start of a lifelong devotion to sports:

Along with teaching history, Don coached football at Downey, Mills, and Burlingame High Schools. He also founded and coached the Burlingame Rugby Club that won the national championship.

It's cliché, but up until the very end Don was giving to his extended family, to his church, to his community, and public education:

Don's parents instilled in him the importance of contributing to his community. In the 1970s, he oversaw the conception and building of two creative playgrounds at Herbert Hoover Elementary in Burlingame with his first wife, Sally. He organized dozens of reunions and hosted backyard parties with his second wife, Elizabeth.

At the memorial service on Saturday we arrived a few minutes early but had to park at the shopping center across the street. The church was filled, and we sat in the overflow room in the back. His children said how much they loved him and will miss him. I will, too.

Accident Follow Up

The car landed on its roof (Trevino/LAT photo)

Last month we posted about a Memorial Day automobile tragedy. The Mercury News follows up:

Last month in Laguna Beach, while a 15-year-old girl was out on a driving lesson with her father, their car rolled through a fence and down an embankment from a closed grocery store parking lot to Coast Highway below. She was seriously injured but expected to survive.

Her father, a passenger in the car, did not.

The crash appears to have been caused by the teen confusing the gas and brake pedals, Laguna Beach police Lt. Jesse Schmidt said.

Crashes involving teen drivers are not uncommon. In 2022, 12% of all fatal crashes in California involved young drivers, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. And nationally, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of unintentional death in 2020 for people ages 15 to 24.

But fatal crashes involving 15-year-old drivers with permits are far less common.

While the Laguna Beach crash stunned the community, such tragedies are unusual — in part because these drivers are typically more cautious. Teens with permits are often freshly familiar with traffic laws, having just passed the written exam. It’s usually their first time behind the wheel, and they’re required to drive with a licensed adult over 25 — often a parent or professional instructor — which adds a layer of supervision not present for fully licensed drivers...

Driving instructors often recommend that new drivers begin in flat, wide-open parking lots, away from other vehicles, to practice basic skills without added pressure. Once teens are comfortable steering, braking and accelerating, they can move on to light traffic areas under supervision.

[CHP's Alex] Pereyda also recommends starting with lower-powered vehicles and emphasizes the tone parents set in the car.

“Try to be as calm as you can,” he said. “You want them to feel comfortable — but not too comfortable — so that they can learn in a healthy way. And make sure they know the responsibility of driving… your life could be taken or another’s could be taken.”

IMHO, the teenager's father displayed a genuine love for his daughter by teaching her how to drive, and the tragedy is more poignant in that she will have to live with the accident's consequences for the rest of her life. BTW, if it's unclear when a therapist advises a patient to "forgive yourself," this example can be Exhibit A.

Coyote Ugh-ly

Coyote at Holy Cross cemetery, Colma

Coyotes are neither threatened nor endangered, but there is an ethic against killing them despite their increasing encroachment on human habitats. And thus far evidence of coyotes attacking pets or children is anecdotal and has not prompted widespread corrective measures.

Nevertheless, here's another report that is potentially disturbing.

On a weekend visit to her mother’s grave at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma, Erin Haley found herself staring out the passenger’s side window of her car, trying to make sense of the scene unfolding near one of the headstones.

There, in broad daylight, was a coyote digging into the soft soil next to one of the markers. Occasionally, the canine would stop what it was doing, startled by a squawking crow or a passing car. Then, it would return its attention to the ground, continuing to sift through the dirt.

...but it’s unlikely the coyote had morbid intentions. Peter Marlow, communications director at the Archdiocese of San Francisco, which oversees the cemetery, told SFGATE its maintenance team has noticed gophers and ground squirrels running around in the area, which in turn draw coyotes that like to chase and hunt them down.

Marlow said the maintenance team has “a process” for removing the rodents and has already refilled the hole in the ground dug up by the coyote.

“We realize how disturbing this looks, but we want to reassure people that the State code governing depth of burials helps protect their loved ones, as do the concrete burial vaults that are used to protect the caskets,” he said in an email.

Wildlife experts say that coyotes' likely targets are burrowing rodents, not human remains that are probably too much work to dig up. However, as we have seen so far this century, the science is rarely settled.

Good Friday, 2025

The Good Friday service is a meditation on Jesus' death and sacrifice. This evening the chaplain's homily emphasized a topic that I had not heard before: that Jesus taught us how to die.

In this world as his death was coming, Jesus reacted with serenity, truth, courage, and compassion. We are taught a great many things when we are growing up, but many of us are not taught how to respond to pain and suffering, the deaths of our loved ones and how to approach our own deaths.

I see many people in the hospital on their deathbeds. Some are tormented and cannot be comforted unless someone is with them at all times, and even then sometimes that’s not enough. Sometimes nothing helps.

And then there are those who know how to self-soothe and are mindful and are serene in accepting while in great pain and tragic, traumatic circumstances and even if isolated and forgotten by loved ones.

Jesus knew pain, but he also knew how to care for his soul while he was in the middle of it. He practiced self-soothing in a deep spiritual embodied way. He cared for his own heart so that he could continue to give of himself. He did this in many ways. Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. When the pressure grew too much, when the crowds kept coming to see him, when he was low in spirits, Jesus stepped away. He didn’t numb or distract himself. He got quiet and still. Jesus didn’t escape to avoid the world. He withdrew to be refilled with the presence of God.

He was honest when he prayed… In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus doesn’t fake it. He lets them fear the weight of his circumstances. He cries, he sweats blood. When he prays, he speaks truth to the father. He opens his heart completely…

Jesus trusted the bigger picture. He was able to accept and surrender, not using avoidance or distraction. In Isaiah’s vision of the Messiah the servant is not frantic. He is not reactive. He is silent and aware and surrendered, not from fear but from focused concentration. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb that went to the slaughter he had inner clarity in the middle of chaos. “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”

Jesus is in control.

Circumstances allow many of us to come to the realization that our death is imminent and that there's nothing we can do about it. It's a seeming paradox: everything is out of our control when are most helpless, yet we can still be in control. Jesus is the Son of God and part of the Holy Trinity, but in the end he was also a great Teacher

It Concentrates his Mind Wonderfully

Billionaire Ron Shaich founded Panera
Bread (Abramsom/Getty/WSJ)

If New Year's resolutions haven't been effective, try thinking of yourself on your deathbed. Ron Shaich refers to these envisionings as "premortems." [bold added]

It’s a habit that began as a response to the death of his parents in the 1990s. His mother was at peace with herself when she died, he says. But his father was “racked with regret and remorse” about decisions he made and the opportunities he missed. What he took away from their experiences was the last lesson that his parents would teach him—and the most profound of them all.

Don’t wait until the end to decide if you are proud of your life. Do it before it’s too late. Do it while you can still do something about it.

“I realized that the time to be having that review was not in the ninth inning with two outs,” he told me. “It was in the seventh inning, the fifth inning and third inning.”

Ron Shaich did not invent the term:

In business, the concept of the premortem was coined by cognitive psychologist Gary Klein, and the late Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman called it “a brilliant idea.” The goal is to identify all the potential sources of failure on a project to improve the chances of success—to imagine how and why things might go wrong instead of explaining after they have gone wrong. “So that the project can be improved,” as Klein once put it, “rather than autopsied.

A premortem can focus the mind better than composing yet another list of resolutions.

Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.--Samuel Johnson

Hospital Chaplaincy

Spiritual care volunteers and staff at Stanford Hospital Chapel

Before an Episcopal priest can be ordained, he or she must complete several months of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). In CPE the students minister to non-Christians as well as Christians, much as priests do in the real world.

Clergy that I have spoken to have said that their most intense and rewarding experiences have occurred while they did their CPE as hospital chaplains. [bold added]

Hospitalized patients and their families often struggle with religious and spiritual quandaries but can’t attend their houses of worship or don’t have one. Chaplains thus fill crucial gaps. As the religious makeup of the U.S. has changed in recent years, their profession has begun to do so too. Board-certified chaplains are now increasingly trained to help patients of diverse beliefs. To learn about their vocations, I [note: Columbia prof. of psychiatry Robert Klitzman] recently conducted an in-depth study, speaking with 50 chaplains from across the country and from different faiths.

While chaplains aid countless patients, they are in many cases marginalized and underfunded. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services allows for direct reimbursement for spiritual services only within the Veterans Affairs system. Offering spiritual care for hospice patients enrolled in Medicare is mandatory but not directly billable. As a consequence, many hospitals have no chaplains; some rely on local volunteer clergy, who know only their own faith, or on other healthcare professionals to fill in for spiritual care...

Chaplains are often the only staff with time to talk to patients, whom they can therefore get to know well. I learned of one patient who phoned the on-call nurse every day at 2 a.m., complaining of pain. The staff tried altering his medicine without success. Finally, a chaplain spoke to the patient, who turned out to be carrying significant guilt from his mother’s suicide when he was 18. When the chaplain arranged for the man’s elder siblings to talk about it, they were “aghast,” the chaplain told me. “They reminded him that their mother had mental-health issues: ‘Don’t you remember?’ It was like a 50-pound weight had been lifted. After that, he never again called the nurses at night.”

Chaplains also serve as critical mediators in conflicts among patients, families and physicians. At another hospital, a teenager who was dying wanted to donate his organs. Soon he was brain dead and on life support, which surgeons planned to remove in the operating room. The boy’s family wanted to be present when he died, but the surgeons refused for fear that they’d disrupt the procedure.

Presented with an impasse, a chaplain negotiated a solution: The family would dress in sterile gowns and stay in the theater for three minutes. The family and physicians sang “Amazing Grace,” the boy’s favorite song. When he died, the mother said to the chaplain: “Thank you for that gift. . . . We got to sing my son into heaven.”

In my research it wasn’t uncommon to learn of medical professionals wary of spiritual care, which they saw as having no medical benefit. Yet spiritual counseling can help patients choose palliative care when the treatments available are both futile and painful.

In facing serious disease, millions of patients find themselves pondering the eternal. Most of us will die in hospitals, far from any religious institution, and might benefit from chaplains’ care. Our healthcare systems would do well to recognize and value them more.

Spending one or two nights in a hospital changes a person. Although WiFi is now commonplace, the hospital environment is not conducive to endless Internet surfing or scrolling through social media. The patient confronts thoughts he may not be accustomed to having, especially if he is non-religious.

In his hour of need, there may not be family members the patient is comfortable talking with, and he can't bother medical personnel, whose focus is usually confined to the health of our physical bodies.

That leaves the hospital chaplain, whose job has expanded to being ready to converse with those who are members of different faiths-or no faith at all. In an increasingly irreligious society the irony is that the need for chaplaincy services has never been greater.

The Hell of Our Imaginings

(From infernodotblog)

There are as many--perhaps more--visions of hell as there are of heaven. They range from the elaborately constructed nine circles of Dante's Inferno to an infinitely large room of emptiness.

Is the eternal fire a metaphor? If so, what does it mean? Is hell a physical place or a state of mind? Is there such a thing as eternal life—and if God’s verdict goes against you, does that mean a life of everlasting torment? Is it possible to believe in hell if you don’t believe in God, or is hell the terrible solitude of living without God?

Pope Francis himself has defined hell as “eternal solitude.” By contrast, Jean-Paul Sartre, the pontiff of existentialism, wrote that “hell is other people.” Which is it?

Evelyn Waugh proposed a darkly witty version of hell in his novel “A Handful of Dust.” It ends with the hero, an English gentleman lost in the Amazonian rain forest, held prisoner by an illiterate mixed-race Guianan who happens to own a complete set of Dickens and forces his captive to read it aloud, over and over again, without hope of release.

Hell expanded centuries ago from theology into literature. Great writers have had a crack at it. Dante set the standard. Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is magnificent, although, as Samuel Johnson remarked, “no one wished it longer.” Milton’s fallen Lucifer sounds unexpectedly modern when he cries, “Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.” Is it the case that we make our own hell?

Whatever our visions of hell, it does seem that we are much less concerned with the afterlife than were our ancestors. The rewards of heaven and the miseries of hell don't seem to motivate people's behavior. As for me, as I enter the winter of my life, the reasoning of Pascal's Wager appeals, so I may as well try to be good and do good.

San Mateo County Fair: Senior Showcase

The Senior Showcase was one of the busiest exhibits at the San Mateo County Fair. Businesses and government agencies answered questions about assisted living, Medicare and senior health insurance, reverse mortgages, medical equipment, and veterans benefits.

The themes of disability and decrepitude were covered thoroughly, as was the Big "D" by the presence of cemeteries and funeral homes.

I've never noticed an exhibit like this at a fair, probably because I wasn't looking for it. The merry-go-round and Ferris wheel period of my life went by too quickly.

The Moment of Truth

Yesterday was a funeral service for a young man, 36, who died earlier this month. I never met him but have known his parents for years. They were reticent about revealing the exact circumstances of his death, and I respect their privacy enough not to inquire directly from them or mutual friends.

The grief was palpable from the three rows of friends and relatives. His father struggled when he gave the eulogy; I told him later how much I admire him.

I thought of Queen Elizabeth and the crowds who attended her state funeral and the millions around the world who watched it on television. I thought how our young man had maybe 40 people attending his service. Like the Queen, he on a much smaller scale had good people who loved him, mourned his passing, and will remember him the rest of their lives.

One key decision when planning an Episcopal/Anglican funeral service is whether to have Holy Communion. The distribution of the Bread and Wine does take time, and the Royal Family was wise to omit Communion with attendance at Westminster Abbey numbering in the thousands. (It's also possible that the ceremony was included at one of the private services.)

On Saturday morning we did have Communion in accordance with Jesus' instruction, included in multiple Gospels, to "do this in remembrance of me."

At all Anglican services the 23rd Psalm is read, as well as the following passage from John 14:

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Whether Queen or commoner, everyone walks through the Valley of Death and at the moment of Truth hopes that there is a mansion waiting on the other side.

A Rōsui By Any Other Name

At any age it's nice to have people who care (WSJ photo)

When my father passed away in 2019, the cause of death was listed as congestive heart failure. But we knew that the underlying reason was an attack of shingles that had hospitalized him a few months earlier.

Although the doctors declared him to be "recovered" from shingles, all his systems were weakened. He had become vulnerable to any infection or health problem that he might well have fought off a year earlier. Before shingles, he was "younger than his age;" after, he looked like his full 94 years.

More doctors are moving toward listing "old age" as the cause of death.

When a very old person dies without any obvious trigger, should doctors try to come up with a cause? Or is it acceptable to say that the person died of old age?

Doctors are increasingly going with the latter. The third-most-common cause of death in Japan last year was rōsui, a word that combines characters meaning “old age” and “decline.” It is generally translated as dying of old age, and it accounted for more than one in 10 deaths, trailing only cancer and heart disease.

“We would say these days, ‘She had all sorts of conditions but since she was old, let’s say she died of old age,’ ” said Akihisa Iguchi, a gerontologist and emeritus professor at Nagoya University. He said families are usually fine with that.

The basic arguments for and against "old age" as a cause of death are fairly clear:

It also gets at the choices families and doctors face when an elderly person grows frail, perhaps suffering from a variety of ailments that aren’t individually life-threatening. They must decide how aggressively to treat those ailments and how to ensure the person’s comfort.

Putting the name of a disease on a death certificate—such as respiratory disease or pneumonia, both on the U.S. top-10 list and common among the elderly—prompts questions about what was done to treat that disease. Death from old age, by contrast, suggests a kind of inevitability.

As for me, I'm not opposed to "old age" as the reason for my cause of death because at that point I won't care.

However, while I'm still breathing--and sentient--please spare my feelings by not saying that I'm suffering from old age. Use WHO's phrase, “aging-associated decline in intrinsic capacity.” Science-speak has a way of mellowing the harsh.

A Smart Move

(Illustration from estateexec.com)

Most middle-class Americans have a simple estate profile.

Assets may include a house, retirement accounts, stocks, cash, and personal effects. Beneficiaries of the estate are typically family and charities.

Even with such straightforwardness, there is still a smart move to make on income and estate taxes. Where possible, charitable bequests should be made from 401Ks and IRAs, while assets that have gone up in value ("appreciated assets") should go to the heirs.

This is because IRA and 401K distributions (unless they're from Roth plans) will be taxable to the heirs, while on the sale of the house or stocks they will only have to pay income taxes on the appreciation after the death of their thoughtful relative. (The charities don't pay taxes in either case.)

There are also the advantages of efficiency and flexibility.

there are two big benefits to making gifts at death using traditional IRA assets.

The first advantage is tax efficiency. Donors of traditional IRA assets at death can win an income-tax trifecta—no tax on contributions going in, no tax on annual growth, and no tax on assets at death...

The second advantage of leaving traditional IRA assets to charities is flexibility. Wills are often drawn up years before someone dies, and circumstances change. As a result, the donor may want to name different charities or donation amounts.

Making these changes is often easier with traditional IRAs than a will.

Let's say that you have a $100,000 IRA and that you wanted to leave $20,000 to your alma mater. You could create a new IRA, name its beneficiary as Old Blue College, and fund it with $20,000 from your existing IRA, leaving the remaining $80,000 for existing IRA's beneficiary. And you could do that without hiring a lawyer to rewrite your will.

You spent a lifetime earning, saving, and building an estate. Spend a few hours seing that thousands of dollars from that estate go to who you prefer, not the government.

Unexpected Answer

Having heard horror stories about marriage breakups, I would assume that one of the first things to be cancelled would be an advance medical care directive, where one party can make a life-or-death call on the ex-spouse.

The WSJ advice columnist gives an unexpected answer. [bold added]

Now I’ve discovered that my advance medical directive still has my ex-wife listed as my healthcare proxy. Should the situation arise, she can decide whether to keep me alive or disconnect me from life support. Should I find somebody else to take over this role?--Alec

You should certainly keep your ex-wife as your healthcare proxy, and not simply out of convenience or a desire to avoid giving offense.

The doctor and medical writer Jerome Groopman has observed that it is often better for doctors not to like their patients. Why? Because it is difficult to be objective in making decisions for people we are attached to. We make more judicious decisions regarding people we care about less.

In your case, your ex-wife doesn’t care much about you these days. And because of that, should you sustain a serious injury or illness, the odds are in your favor that she will make more rational decisions on your behalf than she would have done during the days when she loved you deeply. Even if you do end up getting remarried, keep her as your healthcare proxy. There is no substitute for the rational coldness that comes from having your ex-wife make decisions for you.

This being said, don’t tempt her too much: Make sure she is not one of the beneficiaries of your will or life insurance.

It's possible for a person to decide that he or she can no longer live with the spouse, yet still believe that the other has integrity and judgment. If there's some trust remaining--as one might have with an intimate friend--and there's some distance between the divorce and the fateful decision, then one can leave the directive in place.

Nevertheless, there are many things that can go wrong, and my advice would be to change it.

Sad Postscript

Ellen Chung, Oski, Jon Gerrish, and Miju (Chron)

Last August we first noted the sad story of the young Gerrish family, whose bodies were found on a hiking trail in Mariposa County.

After investigating multiple, even highly improbable possibilities, the coroner's office ruled in October that the cause was "hyperthermia and probable dehydration."

A final unsent text message on Jon Gerrish's cell phone confirms the coroner's finding.

Shortly before noon on Aug. 15, with temperatures soaring above 100 degrees and the couple, their infant daughter and dog hiking up steep switchbacks with little shade, someone from the family attempted to send a final text from Gerrish’s cell phone.

“(Name redacted) can you help us,” the text started at 11:56 a.m. “On savage lundy trail heading back to Hites cove trail. No water or ver (over) heating with baby.”

The text never went through as the Savage Lundy Trail has notoriously poor cellular service.

It's easy to say that the victims should have known or should have done this or that. But how many of us really subject the dozens of decisions we make each day to that kind of deliberation? 999 times out of 1,000 nothing will go wrong.

There was every sign that each member of the family would have a long, happy, and successful life filled with the love of friends and family. Truly a tragedy.

Regret: Making it Work for Us

(Illustration by Michael Glenwood/WSJ)

Now that I'm in the autumn of my life--and that's based on an optimistic timeline--the memories and regrets are mounting like the sand in an hourglass. There are people who I can never see again and choices that can never be unmade.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," said the poet, "yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back." Few of us can go back, and fewer do.

The old wisdom was not to dwell on past failures. Do better next time, and push regrets to the side of the road. Sad memories are negative; they keep us from moving forward.

The new wisdom: human beings are "hard-wired" to feel regret. Because regret is unavoidable, we may as well accept it and have it work for us.

Regret is not dangerous or abnormal. It is healthy and universal, an integral part of being human. Equally important, regret is valuable. It clarifies. It instructs. Done right, it needn’t drag us down; it can lift us up.

So how can we control regrets so that they don't overwhelm us, yet ponder them regularly to improve ourselves?

One ancient remedy that seems to work: going to church. In the Eucharist there is "quiet time" to reflect on sins, ask forgiveness, and think about how to make things right. Just by paying attention to the words in the General Confession, we confront our past missteps:

Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; in your compassion forgive us our sins, known and unknown, things done and undone; and so uphold us by your Spirit that we may live and serve you in newness of life, to the honor and glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Simple, and in this humble blogger's case, sometimes effective.

Christmas: Paring Back

At the beginning of the Christmas Eve service the priest walked around the altar waving the thurible in a pendulum motion, and the smell of incense permeated the air. Many "low" Episcopal churches honor their Catholic origins during the highest-ranking liturgical days like Easter and Christmas.

The local church consolidated the afternoon family, midnight Christmas Eve, and morning Christmas Day services into one.

The reasons are connected: the church has chosen to reduce the number of in-person gatherings; volunteers are down; and attendance has fallen. We will be lucky to have normal attendance on Sunday, the day after Christmas, so perhaps two services this week are enough. Like other areas of life, we are paring back to essentials.

The Christ Child was not the Messiah that the Jews were expecting. Our own expectations have similarly been upended: two years ago we did not anticipate that we would fear meeting with friends and strangers, traveling, or even just going to school and work.

Not as mighty as we thought we were, our prayers float up to heaven on clouds of incense, trusting that there is Someone who is listening.

Bob and Dan, Continued

Two Senators who were friends for almost 70 years were honored this week.

Sen. Elizabeth Dole says goodbye to her husband.

Bob Dole Lies in State as Biden Hails Former Senator as ‘Giant of Our History’

“Well, you know, Bob and I, like many of us here, we disagreed on a number of things, but not on any of the fundamental things,” Mr. Biden said. “We genuinely respected one another as colleagues. As fellow Americans. It was real. It wasn’t fake. And we became great friends.”

From today's Star-Advertiser:

The Navy’s newest warship, the Arleigh Burke-class missile destroyer USS Daniel Inouye, was officially commissioned at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on Wednesday. After days of rain, the sun shown bright during the morning ceremony as the ship, named for the powerful Hawaii statesman, war hero and Medal of Honor recipient, joined the fleet...

Daniel Inouye — as a Japanese American and World War II veteran — became an important figure in postwar U.S.-Japan reconciliation and in shaping U.S. policy in Asia more broadly. He spearheaded efforts, which, in 1994, resulted in Congress appropriating funds to create the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Waikiki. It aims to bring together military, civilian and academic leaders from across the region. After his death, the center was renamed in his honor...

Several speakers at the ceremony reflected on Inouye’s friendship with former Republican U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, who died Sunday. Inouye and the Kansan were often at odds politically when they served in the Senate, but they shared a bond as WWII soldiers who were both seriously wounded in battle during their service.

Death Makes Life Complicated

(From USA Today)

In almost every year for the past ten years, there has been a death of a relative or a friend or a friend's close relative, and I've helped sort out the finances. It's not easy, even for those who have some accounting, financial, and/or tax training like myself.

For the spouse of the deceased, the tax decisions can be complicated and must be made at the worst possible time. The broad checklist of issues is:

Filing an estate-tax return [to claim the $11.7 million exemption]
Tax-bracket shifts [from joint status to single or head of household]
The step-up [of tax basis in inherited assets]
The home-sellers’ exemption [drops from $500K to $250K two years after spouse's death]
Retirement accounts [change beneficiaries, accelerate or defer withdrawals because of tax-bracket shifts]
Withholding and estimated taxes [may need to be increased by survivor, if deceased paid most of them]

The obvious recommendation is to get professional help, which is preferably lined up long before death. But there's still the problem of finding people who are both knowledgable and honest.

In Hawaii we have a big ohana, which includes a lawyer, CPA, and others who are familiar with elder-care issues. When my father passed away, all of us looked after Mom's best interest though even in our case there were some disagreements.

In the absence of having family who can help, there are other groups, such as churches, Kiwanis, Elks, Freemasons, alumni organizations, etc. where one might find trustworthy advisers.

Still there are no absolute guarantees, even with families, so it's best to be kind to everyone throughout your life so that some of the thoughtful and honest ones will help you and your spouse after one of you is gone.

Unsatisfying Explanation

Ellen Chung and Jonathan Gerrish (Chron photo)

Two months ago we noted how the death of a young family on a hiking trail had captured "international attention" because the cause of death could not be ascertained. The bodies of the parents, 1-year-old daughter, and dog were all found two days after they went missing. They had no visible marks, and toxicology reports were negative.

The investigators have rendered their conclusion: [bold added]

Investigators said Thursday that a young family and their dog found on a remote hiking trail in August in a mysterious mass death perished as a result of hyperthermia and probable dehydration.

Mariposa Sheriff Jeremy Briese detailed the final hours of the former San Francisco clan that started a hike with a temperature of 74 degrees in the morning only to see the thermostat rocket up to 109 by the afternoon. They succumbed to the heat and lack of water on a steep stretch of switchbacks with no shade, he said.

Why does this explanation feel unsatisfying? Probably because it's a conclusion arrived at through a process of elimination.

There were few clues at the scene and no indications of foul play. Investigators sent samples of water from the river, creek and the couple’s bladder-lined backpack to a lab. During the probe, investigators eliminated illegal drugs, lightning strikes, mine fumes, weapons, suicide and other causes of death, as they waited for test results to come back.

The head doesn't always give what the heart wants.

“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” ~ Arthur Conan Doyle