I KNOW HOW YOU FEEL Try as I might, there are a great many things concerning which I cannot comfortably say “I know how you feel.” For instance, I can’t say it regarding bungee jumping, but I can regarding white water rafting. I can’t say it about breaking a limb, but I can about landing foot first onto a three-inch nail. Semantics. At the most astute of times, knowing that a physical hurt is not the same thing as an emotional trauma, I hesitate to throw myself into the ring of common experience even when two situations seem similar because experience and the feelings they expose are so personal. Perhaps the greatest realm in which I cannot remotely get close to saying those soul-bonding words, “I know how you feel” despite what I do for a living, is in dying, or more accurately – knowing that one is actively dying. And I have now been in the presence of some gracious souls who knew they were, and in almost every instance have found them open, receptive to questions, and in the face of
