Karinaland River

  Knowing Last night, on New Year’s Eve, 2025, I am flooded with immense gratitude, bigger than life. To honor it, I finally write about something specifically sacred to me. With its intense flame, the essence of the story is burning inside me. Today, ten years ago, my Mama puts her simple paper affairs one more time in order with the assistance of Edeltraut, her trustworthy helper who comes twice a day. It’s New Year’s Eve – Sylvester . I speak to her on the phone, my morning, her evening already, nine hours difference. “Like you, I am not going to do anything, just go to bed early,” I say. She falls asleep and never wakes up again. That night of hers is my day here. Despite not having heard yet of her death, I seem to know. The irrepressible urge to drive to Point Reyes for a walk on the beach. When two hospice workers drop by bringing confusing news about the service for my husband Bob, I blurt out impatiently: “I need to go, can’t figure this out now.” At the ocean, my feet are...

  Love Poems of Life The summer of 1991, I am hired to take care of Lowell. Barbara, his wife of only one year, asks me to also cook. There is a steady stream of visitors which Lowell delights in. His best friend is Bob, a writer and sociologist, visiting often. After dinner, everyone enjoys listening to Bob as he reads out loud from his writing-in-progress about his Jewish family and upbringing in Chicago. Balmy evenings. Lowell’s progressing bladder cancer. He and I have a secret code when things need to calm down: doucement – gently. Three weeks later, the hospital bed arrives, making things a little easier. Lowell needs stronger painkillers. Together we discern who is “comfortable” visiting their bedridden friend, now by looking gaunt. I am laser focused on Lowell’s well-being, all else is just part of the colorful, at times thorny, setting. To me new, unknown. Doucement. The home is light filled, birds chirping outside the window, a warm breeze. On this quiet Sunday afternoon,...

 W inter Skeleton of my Tulip Tree What would I tell my friend John if visiting him this afternoon?  That the winter skeleton of my tulip tree started to erupt into bloom, the new cups of its flowers so promising, so inviting…   In the twelve months from January 2016 to beginning of 2017, I experienced the deaths of the three most important people in my life.   My mother first, my husband 9 months after that, and three months later my colleague John Knoop. The three strong pillars of my life were gone by January 12  when I found this closest friend and deepest confidant dead in his bed. He was 77. I have not yet spoken of him in this blog.    John was the best listener I have ever encountered – ever. After a bicycle accident that almost killed him,  he stoically made the best of loss of full motion in his legs and hands  for the next 20 years . But you would not have known any of this when sitting with him and sharing a few sips of Mezcal. Jo...

"Death is Great as Life" Today – my husband’s fifth death day, the full moon, and the warm gentle rains…  A ll is melting together in a smooth continuous arrival of blessings. Yesterday evening, I harvest a big basket of apples from the old golden delicious tree. Bringing some of the fruit over for Ladan, John, and their daughters Melanie and Moneli who play hide and seek with me. This morning Beth from across the street comes to get her share, then Gregg, a few houses up, arrives with a bag and I take the apples down the stairs to meet him. Pies will be baked :) Earlier in the morning a student lets me know about her dream & sobbing in it, suppressed emotions still stuck in her throat. Sharing insights, rain, tears, apples, feelings, delights – this “remembrance day” keeps unfolding with showers of all kinds. Bob appears, too. Meeting on zoom with the marketing communications manager of UC Berkeley Press about the promotion of the re-issue of Bob’s 1989 book Black Lives...

  “Dedicate your life to something bigger, higher, better than yourself.” These days I am contemplating again my caregiving years. Which were also my years of mourning. Which were also full of joy, plenty of delight, and deep fulfillment. Meaningful, life affirming, infused with a profound sense of belonging and purpose. Here is part # 2 of On Living and Leaving , from 2012. About the last years of taking care of my husband – twenty-five years my senior – with his health in slow decline from kidney disease. He died at home in October 2016. And then there is ordinary life, such as home repairs, and the rats that have entered the laundry room again. One adventurous visitor has nibbled on an apple in the bowl on the dining table. I put it in a different spot to test the creature, and sure enough next day the half eaten apple is gone. Intelligent being. It must have entered through the heating vent nearby. Garland from Rat Patrol is setting more traps. “What did you do last night? Y...

On Living and Leaving Yesterday I came across an old piece of writing from January 2012, and was struck. It was done 4 years and 9 months before my husband’s death on October 20, 2016. How aware I was already back then that losing him would be very hard. Of course I did not know yet that in 2016, in the span of one year, first my mother would die, and three months after my husband’s death, I would find my best friend, colleague and confidant dead in his bed. And with that, the most important pillars in my life vanish in one big swoop. And I am not receiving Bob's pension, a pending financial crisis and instability is awaiting me. I give up my filmmaking. Total disorientation, aggravated grief, the deepest shattering of my life. Friends around me cannot comprehend the magnitude of this earthquake. So, I go into hiding. But I had experienced so much grace when care giving for my mother in Germany twice for three weeks, and then full time for Bob his last nine months. The utter beaut...