Tag: death

Meeting Mrs. D and Remembering My Existential Childhood…

· Nicole M. Roccas 6 Leave a Comment on %s
It was a hot, muggy morning last week, the final day of my month-long vacation in Wisconsin,  and my abdomen was in a state of turmoil. I’d later realize my stomach tumult was not indigestion but a bilious stone in the gallbladder I should have had removed years ago. I tried to focus on the task at hand…

What is Death? Part 1 (Guest Post)

· Nicole M. Roccas
Happy Thanksgiving! I can think of no topic more appropriate for this day than a good ol’ conversation about death and dying. Just kidding–I’m not trying to be metaphorical. It’s not a holiday up here in Canada and when I was planning this blogathon, I completely forgot to develop a post about US Thanksgiving. Generally you folks don’t…

Keep the Cross in Christmas: Reframing the Annual Culture Wars

· Nicole M. Roccas
Honestly, I’m kind of bracing myself for the annual Christmas wars. Any day now, people will start populating their newsfeeds with the frantic mantra to “Keep Christ in Christmas!” It’s not that I wish to minimize the importance of Christmas or that I’m unconcerned about religious liberty. In this case, though, I wonder if we actually recognize what…

Dying and the Virtues and Travel Anxiety

· Nicole M. Roccas
Going on a trip is a lot like dying. Especially when you’re plagued with a mild but neurotically persistent fear of flying like I am. (Let’s just say I watched the crash scene in Castaway one too many times on the big screen during my formative teen years.) Because I travel fairly often, I have various ways of dealing…

Spending the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross at a Funeral Home

· Nicole M. Roccas 1 Leave a Comment on %s
First of all, some context: I am currently co-teaching a course with Fr. Geoffrey Ready about death in the Orthodox tradition. One of the things we come up against in this course is the fact that death in our culture is kind of a black box–people go in, they die, a bunch of paperwork (right?), then there’s a…