I found the Mail to Self app a year and a half ago. It is genius in its simplicity and productivity. At the same time maniacal in the burden of its output.
The app is added to your phone. You enter an email address into the app. After that when you swipe up or go to share a web page, article, etc. there is a button for Mail to Self. Just tap it and whoosh you got the article URL etc. in your inbox. The workflow is this. I will keep looking at my news feed, my papers, my sites, etc. and just mail to self to read later. Not so fast. My inbox is filled and I am not reading later cuz I got the attention span of a gnat
To repair the gnat in me I am going to post twice a week some of the articles I mailed to self. This is a way to share them with my non/imaginary readers and to force me to achieve inbox zero.
Spiritually Speaking: Grief sticks around after the flowers wilt
Beryl Schewe writing in the Eden Prairie News offers a unique way to address a loved ones grief when words fail us.
If only grief were so easy. Long after your flower arrangement has composted, grief lingers on. Grief has a way of showing up like an uninvited houseguest who refuses to leave.
Schewes’ idea is to send a book. She offers a selection of five books one of which includes C.S. Lewis’ “A Grief Observed” which is my favorite read that I have returned to frequently. Hop over and take a look.
TED Talks: What Makes Life Worth Living in the Face of Death
This is a stunning and powerful TED talk by Lucy Kalanithi a physician whose husband was diagnosed with Stage IV Lung Cancer and died 22 months later.
Much of what she says and addresses are very close if not similar to what I felt and what Donna did with her life after her diagnosis till her death. Donna and her husband Paul may not be identical but the one point Lucy made that rings true for both Donna and I is this:
“Our job isn’t to fight fate, but to help each other through. Not as soldiers but as shepherds.”
I was the caregiver and her shepherd. She became my muse and a shadow for the remainder of my life.
There’s a poem by W.S. Merwin — it’s just two sentences long — that captures how I feel now. “Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.”