This year is ending with sad news. Professional objectivity is necessary to be helpful to my clients. I can't let their needs and troubles trigger my own needs and troubles - can't want anything back from them other than that they show up, pay, and work on their work. But that doesn't mean I can't like, respect and even love them. And when they have sad news in their lives, I do feel sad. This is one of those times.

I had been concerned about my thirty six year old client who had a biopsy the week before Christmas on a lesion recently found in his brain. They did the MRI because he insisted that the blurred vision and headaches he was suddenly having were not right - not just a stress response, that his body was screaming something was really wrong. The doctor resisted his request for the test but did reluctantly and scathingly allow it. There is a lesson there for all of us I guess. Insist.

The biopsy results came back not just malignant but terminal within two to eight months. This man is 36 ( so with regard to bracketing I need to remember that that was the same age Kerry was when he died, and he is happily married (only got married in October but the relationship is much longer, five years I think) to his true love. I see so many couples who are together for all kinds of material or insecurity reasons, who aren't good to each other, who don't treat each other well, but this couple is the real deal - true partners in love and life. In their relationship, their connection to their families and community of friends, and their own personal growth they demonstrate so much of what is the best about being human.

The young man who is dying was given the super hero nickname "The Includer" by his best friend and it has stuck. So there is a good sized group of young couples really reeling from this news and many of them are clients of mine. This is the kind of situation in which I believe that I am especially able to be an anchor - a servant of the old energy that surrounds birth and death. And sad as I am, I am also thankful.