This blog is dedicated to my beautiful sister Christine “Kissie” – my lifelong companion, teacher, and best friend forever – who was 51 when she died of bone marrow cancer in 2014. Her incomparable light and love are water and air to my psyche, and mourning her is as natural a privilege and commitment as sharing and rejoicing in her life were.

This blog is my personal act of subversion in a death-phobic, grief-averse culture, as well as my desire to contribute to a shift in how we learn, think, talk about, and experience death and grief.