Deonna Kelli Sayed

Life is funny.

You laugh and then you die.

Seriously. Life is funny in a magical sense, for we never know who we are going to meet.

I recently had the chance to interview Stimp Hawkins, an 82-year-old Buddhist and former hospice chaplain who is on a mission to make people comfortable with death and end-of-life issues. Stimp is anything but morbid. He heads up the monthly Death Cafe at the local independent bookstore. He is Zen even when he drops foul language with his hands clasped close to his heart.

Dammit, he says, he we all going to die so we better plan for it. Better than leaving the arrangements to the bereaved. Better than leaving it up to anybody or nobody. Besides, thinking about death makes sweeter the time we have amongst the living.

Life is funny because I worked this talk with Stimp the Death Pimp into a collaborative multimedia project with writer Steve Mitchell for Yes!Weekly, a local independent newspaper in Greensboro, NC. Steve wrote the feature and I produced the podcast.

Good things, my friends. All good things.