Mirror Synchronicity: Elvis lives on

Yesterday when I was getting a blood draw, the technician told me her mom went to high school with Elvis. He was a senior when her mom was a freshman.

Then I went to my first visit to a hospice patient with dementia and we started talking about music. I asked her who she would like to hear and she said Elvis.

Later in the day, I was talking to a friend who went to the ADEC conference in Atlanta this year. The friend brought up a really interesting presentation that she had seen about celebrities who live on in lore...and of course, my friend mentioned Elvis as an example. I screamed in her ear.

Elvis lives on.  Two synchros in one day and I wouldn't have bothered, but after I heard the third, I had to post.

Mirror Synchronicity: 72 Handouts

I was convening Dr. Jenny Streit-Horne's and Dr. Jan Holden's session on after-death communication at the Association for Death Education and Counseling's annual conference.  Now, there was already a synchronicity with the choice of me as a convener (read here) but there was also a synchronicity with the handouts.

I was absolutely amazed that they had EXACTLY the right number of handouts for all of the attendees at the session.  No more, no less.  I mentioned it to Dr. Holden afterwards, and she said that it was definitely a synchronicity because she had pressed the wrong buttons on the copier.  She had intended to only bring 50 copies but somehow it started making 100.  She stopped the copier at 72 handouts, which is exactly the number of people who attended the session.

Directional Synchronicity: Convene

I was preparing for the Association for Death Education & Counseling's annual conference.  I had volunteered to convene a session.  This basically is the person who introduces the speakers, helps them with timing and also distributes handouts.  I had convened sessions in the past and previously I was able to convene sessions I was planning on attending anyways.  Unfortunately, when I got notice of the sessions that I was assigned, I was not happy.  I was assigned sessions that could be interesting, but were not the ones that I had intended to attend at those designated times.  I wrote the convener back and said that I could not convene those sessions.  I did volunteer that I knew for sure that I wanted to go see Dr. Jenny Streit-Horne's and Dr. Jan Holden's presentation on "Afterdeath Communication:  Unlocking its Healing Potential" and if they needed a convener for that session, I would happily oblige.  The organizer told me that she would see what she could do, but then I never heard back.

When I checked in to the conference, they noted that I was a convener, but that I was not assigned to any sessions.  They said, we do have one extra session that the other convener cancelled on.  Is there any chance you could do it?  I said that it depended on what session it was, because I already had planned what sessions I was going to attend.  Sure enough, they grabbed the folder, and the session they needed someone to convene was the one that I had wished for in the first place - Dr. Holden's session!  I said that I would be happy to convene her session!

Mirror Synchronicity: Live Tweet

I was live-tweeting the opening session at my ADEC conference...

Before you judge, I have to tell you I am the Social Media and Networking Chair for ADEC the Association for Death Education and Counseling. It is my job to tweet during the sessions. I am subtle.

William Worden received recognition for his work in grief counseling and I had just tweeted a comment he made that I liked,

@_Lizzy_ Early ADEC..."It was pretty grass roots. Why? Because we were sitting on the grass in Maryland" -W. Worden #ADEC12

I then heard a woman behind me lean over to the person next to her and say, "Wow - someone is tweeting the speakers as they speak." I turned around and said sheepishly, "that was me." We both smiled and introduced ourselves. Out of 500 people in the room, the person she was talking about was sitting in front of her.

Michelle then tweeted,

@1HeartHealerLA @_lizzy_ great to see someone else tweeting about Worden and #ADEC12

Death education is a happy place

I recently had the great pleasure to attend the 32nd annual conference for the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC.org) in Kansas City, MO. Having never attended this conference, I was not sure what to expect. I thought some people might be a bit 'goth' and perhaps morose with a lot of black. (I didn't think too hard on the matter). What I actually found was an amazing gathering of people willing to open their hearts and talk about the big stuff. To be clear, it wasn't all "serious" conversations - there was a lot of laughter too. Not surprisingly, there were quite a few synchronicities and serendipitous moments. But before I get into those, I wanted to talk about the general feeling of openness and try to share the experience.

Robert Neimeyer, for those of you who are not into Thanatology (the study of dying, death and bereavement) is one of the significant researchers in the field. As a graduate student, I recognized his name as one that I saw a lot in my studies. When I saw him at the opening reception, I asked him if he would take a picture with me for me to send to my advisor to goad my advisor about who I was "hanging out with" at the conference.

Because I did not know Professor Neimeyer personally, it was a big risk to walk right up to a top scholar and ask for a moment of his time. Well, he was so gracious and so polite and when we took the picture, he had a genuine smile - not a forced pose like most people do when asked to take a picture with someone they don't know. The person who was trying to use my phone to take the picture struggled a bit with the design of the camera phone (Google, please fix this!) and the moment extended into several as we had to keep trying...and then the lighting was bad, so we tried a different angle. Still, every picture had that genuine smile. (I would love to share, but when I took the picture I did not mention the internet, so in respect to him I shall leave it out...). Later on that evening and early the next day, we kept passing each other. Each time he smiled, genuinely. I felt special to be acknowledged by someone as important as him.

For the keynote address the following day, the main room filled up quickly and I was told there were open seats up in front. (Most like to sit in the back so they can get out of the room quickly). I ended up sitting in the very front row. There was one empty seat next to me in a very full conference room, and who should walk up and inquire, but Professor Neimeyer. Now, I had already randomly run into him 3 or 4 times in the past day in a conference of 600 people, so it was quite amusing to me. I told him, "I swear, I'm not stalking you!"

The keynote was amazing - one of the best I have ever seen. He made us laugh, he made us cry. His name is Thomas Lynch and he is a former funeral director, essayist and poet. I should be embarrassed to admit this, but I had not heard of him prior to this event, so it was even more surprising and delightful to have been so thoroughly entertained. But here's what also struck me. Sitting next to me, Professor Neimeyer laughed heartily. Several times when he laughed, he looked around to watch other people laughing too. It was like he took great pleasure in other people's laughter as well. Now you may have seen studies about how we laugh more in a group, yada, yada, yada, but this was different. He actively looked around and took in the laughter of others. He turned to me while he was laughing to see if I was laughing too. It was very unique to me and I pondered it for several days. What does it mean? Why does he do that? What does it say about him?

Over the course of several days in having additional connections with a wide variety of attendees, I talked about my experience and observations and I found out that others had similar stories -the feeling of connectedness. Granted, Professor Neimeyer has been going to this conference for years and is a former president, but so many people had the same type of experience - a meaningful (if brief) interaction with this man who is one of the TOP of his field. I even heard a story about him in a Conga line at a conference in the early '90s. Let me remind you, he is a top scholar on DEATH and DYING and he is this super friendly, open, warm person who laughs heartily.

And in thinking about this man, I realized that he personified for me the experience from the whole event. Those who study death and dying are, in the words of Thomas Lynch, "in the deep end of the pool." We were all connected. No one there has had an easy life. One doesn't just "happen" into the field of death and dying and grief and loss... we're there because we know loss. Intimately. But once one knows loss, you process it, you think about it, you accept it, you are free. You are light. It's there. You understand that you could lose your husband or your wife or your mother or your father, your child or your best friend tomorrow. You could even die yourself. So today is an opportunity, a gift. What do we do with this gift? Do we treasure it? Do we open it, share it, devour it, dance with it? Absolutely.

Thank you God for giving me today.