On Pluto: Reflections from Beyond

It’s often easy to feel sorry for oneself—the pity thing.

Let’s face it; there’s a bit of Eeyore in all of us—the forever gloomy old, gray donkey in A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree: “I was so upset, I forgot to be happy…”

But I’ve learned, the hard way that a pity party is a lonely party of one. No candles to blow out.

The epic film “Oppenheimer,” celebrated winner of seven Oscars at the 96th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director Chris Nolan, Best Leading Actor Cillian Murphy, and Best Supporting Actor Robert Downey Jr., took viewers to the chilling brink of the nuclear age—a threshold in years to come of treacherous government lies and deceits worldwide that over time cost millions of innocent lies.

Turning the tables on denial: Chris Herren, a former college and NBA basketball star with the Boston Celtics and Denver Nuggets, was a king of denial in his addiction to alcohol, cocaine and heroin—until he ran out of excuses…

"There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment."
— the late journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson

With nuclear war saber-rattling today from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and third-world countries seeking to develop the means to hurl nuclear missiles toward the United States at a moment’s notice, the fallout of fear envelops many of us.

As world experts race for a cure, harnessing some of the brightest minds on the planet, those on this precarious journey—an estimated 55 million worldwide, projected to reach 78 million in six years, then add in the caregivers—must have heart. For the mind and the heart, the place of the soul, are both vital for victory over a demon of a disease that has run its serpentine course since ancient times, demoralizing generations upon generations.

Several weeks ago, I became a member of an exclusive club that I never wanted to join: a parent who has lost a child.

No parent should ever have to bury their child, and no parent should ever have to rush to an emergency room, as I did recently at Cape Cod Hospital, to see a sheet pulled over their child’s head.

And yet so many have.…

My close friend Paul Berry embraced both living well and dying well in his courageous battle with life-ending Bulbar Onset ALS. Paul passed away in peace recently, 15 months after diagnosis.

I wrote about him four months ago on this blog, reflecting on his state of mind in persevering against all odds in this fast track variant of ALS. A skilled psychotherapist on Cape Cod, Paul spent his work life helping others find peace, and in the end he found peace himself from within.

“While memory is king, it is also a bit of a dunce,” says close friend Lisa Genova, Harvard-educated neuroscientist, author of yet another New York Times Bestseller, Remember: The Science of Remembering and The Art of Forgetting, published through Penguin Random House.

“Often,” she adds, “you can’t remember what you had for lunch on Tuesday, but in the long term you can remember the details of a family vacation… Memory is selective.”

Hold that thought…

In July 2021, he was diagnosed with bulbar onset ALS, a fast-track, complicated variant of this horrific disease that reaches far deeper than the somber symbolism of an ice bucket challenge.

ALS, also referred to as “Lou Gehrig Disease,” can strike in two ways—limb onset and bulbar onset. Limb onset initially affects limbs (arms and legs) and accounts for the majority of all ALS cases. With bulbar onset, symptoms first befall from the neck up, a far faster demise than limb onset.