Death Cafe profile for MeriNW (Meredith Graff)
Location: United States
About MeriNW (Meredith Graff):
Family Law Attorney (Utah 1999; Washington 2002) and Washington State Certified (2009) Family Mediator (1983). Celebrant (Funerals and Healing Ceremonies, certified 4/2014 by Celebrant Foundation and Institute). Reiki Master (2009). Hospice volunteer with Twilight Brigade. JD, focus on Elder Law (1998, SJ Quinney College of Law at University of Utah); MA, Creative Writing Poetry (1990, Rutgers University); BA, Womens Studies (Loretto Heights College, now Regis University, 1984). Partner with Eugene Graff at McKELL GRAFF, PLLC (founded 2003), married 24 years, four children, six grandchildren, two Westies, one cat. Breast cancer survivor since 2/1999.
What brings you to Death Cafe?
I have been interested in issues of death and dying since I sold life insurance for Prudential Insurance Company of America in the early 1990s after I received my masters degree. I focused on Elder Law in law school, but was diagnosed with breast cancer after I graduated and didn't pass the bar exam. I worked for a family law attorney for three years as a mediator, office manager and JD paralegal while I recovered. When I got my Washington bar license, I got a job practicing family law. When I started my law firm in 2003, I added elder law to my practice. I have become increasingly interested in work involving spirit (Reiki) and focusing more on mediation, which now includes families with an elder family member as well as couples. In 2013 I was trained as a Twilight Brigade hospice volunteer and also in 2013, began my Celebrant training, which is focused on Funerals and Ceremonies for Healing. With my training in mediation and facilitation, and my interest in death-related issues, I was drawn to Death Cafe. I believe that death needs to be brought out of the closet and into the open. It has been a taboo topic too long. Families need to talk about death! I lost my father suddenly in 2009 when he was hit by a car that went off the road while he was standing on the sidewalk. My mother died in 2012 of pancreatic cancer. My work in mediation, Reiki, and my forty-year-exploration of life after life helped me and helped me help my brothers after my beloved father died and then, three years later, when we said good-bye to our mother. I would like other people to have the same experience of being able to start talking about death with other people so they feel more comfortable with the subject. Death Cafe is a wonderful forum!
What would you like your legacy to be?
I would like people to remember me as a loving, creative, enthusiastic: a non-traditional lawyer, a mediator who could bring people who were far apart together, a friend who cared about and who was always "there" for her friends, a whole-hearted, loving mother and grandma, a wife whose best friend was her husband, Gene. Smart, fun, OCD in a good way, a "klutz," able to laugh at herself. a voracious reader, a great jewelry maker, someone who tried very hard to help people feel safe, loved, and nurtured.
Thoughts for sharing:
From Illusions, by Richard Bach:
"Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you are still alive, it isn't."
"Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends."
"Dying is like diving into a deep lake on a hot day. There's the shock of that sharp cold change, the pain of it for a second, and then accepting it is a swim in reality."
From the first stanza of a poem of unknown origin that my favorite grandma shared with me back in 1970 when I was 16 years old:
"If you have a friend worth loving,
Love him. Yes, and let him know
That you love him, ere life’s evening
Tinge his brow with sunset's glow.
Why should good words ne’er be said
Of a friend–until he's dead? . . . "
And, a poem I wrote in 1989 because I was a "witness," waiting up the mountain for hours in traffic until the road was clear:
GOING ON FOR MATTHEW
“ . . . and does it not seem hard to you,
when all the sky is clear and blue,
and I should so much like to play,
to have to go to bed by dat?”
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
if not for the sick down in Newark waiting,
you might have stayed home
on that early March day of no snow.
Not real for me either, those cartoon clouds
hanging lazy on a flannel-board blue sky.
You might have wondered at that day,
as I did, so crisp and baby-new,
whether God ordered it, just for you.
Only an hour’s space between us,
both traveling east
on that ten-mile rubberband
that stretches rolling New Jersey meadows,
thick with wildflower cows,
into steamy cement cities,
borders butting up on all sides.
Your stopping stopped me,
eight miles out.
The azure silence cut through road-sliced
canyons and curves crushed with cars.
Hawks circled
in robin’s egg skies
sewn to crayon green hills.
Sun glitter on dewfall chopped the day
out of time.
It was an arm-bent-out-the-window,
blast-the-radio day. A day to sing along.
But when a truck slammed
your Bronco into the cement barrier,
dragging it 235 feet, not stopping for breath,
not stopping for you, only stopping
when all that was left was a body
for firemen to pry out with torches
and axes, did you still wonder
at that day, looking down upon your mangled form,
whether God ordered that part too?
Don’t you think it is strange you died
that way, when all your life was spent
healing and saving and holding on?
But listen, the crystal morning air,
clouds and song, though only minutes,
last longer than death’s little moment.
And maybe, Matthew, you were right:
ordered, just for you.
I waited while sand trucks gave up
sand, each grain sparkling in the sun
like diamonds placed gently on top of a grave.
Because something had to be done
for traffic to go on.
Dr. Matthew Brady, 59, died
March 2, 1989, when he was
rammed by an out-of-control
tractor-trailer on New Jersey’s
Route 280, near West Orange, NJ.
Star Ledger, March 3, 1989
Contact MeriNW (Meredith Graff)
MeriNW (Meredith Graff)'s posts on the Death Cafe website
With Meredith McKell Graff
Aug. 16, 2014, 12.45 p.m. - 3.00 p.m. (Pacific)
Free
I have experienced loss of close family members first hand, having lost my father in 2009, my best friend in 2010, and my mother in 2012.
This will be a ...
Death Cafe write up: Death Cafe in the Couv
Posted by MeriNW (Meredith Graff) on April 16, 2014, 7:53 p.m.
We had a great turn out for the first Death Cafe in the 'Couv on Saturday, April 12, 2014! We munched on red devil's food cupcakes and caramel turtle brownies while sharing our thoughts on death. We started by listening the sound of the singing bowl and "Seasons in the Sun," (Terry Jacks) and ended with "Spirit in the Sky" (Norman Greenbaum). One participant suggested we devote a death cafe to just talking about pet deaths.
We are forming a planning committee for our next Death Cafe in the 'Couv in July, 2014! Contact us if you are interested in being on the committee!
With HEALING EACH OTHER/McKELL GRAFF, PLLC
April 12, 2014, 1.30 p.m. - 3.30 p.m. (Pacific)
Suggested donation of $5 to cover the cost of refreshments
Initially, we expect to be small, however, wanting to meet the needs of our community in opening an on-going conversation about death, we will grow our size, as interest is ...