God bless you, Dr. Kevorkian (15 page)

IS

During my controlled near-death experience this morning, I had a continental breakfast with Harold Epstein, who died recently on his one-and-a-half-acre estate in Larchmont. He died of what can only be called natural causes, since he was ninety-four. This sweet man was a certified public accountant who, after a heart attack thirty-four years ago, surrendered in the company of his sweet wife Esta to what he himself called "Garden Insanity."

Esta is still among us, and I hope she's listening. These two love birds, Harold and Esta Epstein, traveled around the world four times, seeking, and often

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finding, wonderful new plants for American gardens, although neither one of them had any formal training as a horticulturist. At the time Harold's soul traded his old flesh for new flesh in Heaven, he was president emeritus of the American Rock Garden Society, the Greater

York Orchid Society, and the Northeast Region of the American Rhododendron Society. I asked him for a WNYC sound bite I could use in summing up his life after his heart attack so long ago. He said, "My only regret is that everybody couldn't be as happy as we were." The late Harold Epstein said that the first thing he did after he got to Heaven, after picking a flower he'd never seen before, was to thank God for the priceless gift of garden insanity.
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ana i

we knew all the risks I was taking during the controlled near-death experiences he has been giving me. But today I fell in love with a dead Her name

is Vivian Hallinan.

What made me want to meet her was one word in the headline on her obituary in the New
Times:

"Vivian Hallinan, 88, Doyenne of Colorful West Coast Family." What made someone or even a whole family

"colorful"? I had interviewed people in the Afterlife who had been brilliant or influential or courageous or charismatic or whatever. But what the heck was
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