My grandmother died at home recently, surrounded by her family and loving caregivers with the...
Category: Death & Dying
End-of-life planning with loved ones can be hard. Here’s where to start.
Over the last few years, I’ve been talking to my parents about death, in part because of my dad’s...
Widow’s Peak
She said she had something to tell me but that she was afraid. I reached for her trembling hand,...
In some families, medical assistance in dying is anything but a peaceful ending
Quinn empathized with her mother, who feared both a rapid and slow decline. Eva was living in a...
In Difficult Cases, ‘Families Cannot Manage Death at Home’
Where do people most want to be when they die? At home, they tell researchers — in familiar...
The weight of caring at home
"I wrote/drew this opinion piece for the LA Times two years ago, right before COVID drastically...
How My Father Escaped Jail for Christmas
My mother and father never married. This meant, as my mother explained, that I was his legal next...
Private Equity Is Gobbling Up Hospice Chains And Getting Involved In The Business Of Dying
Today, private equity firms are acquiring American hospices at an astonishing rate. From 2012 to...
What I’ve Learned Over a Lifetime of Caring for the Dying
Some of the hardest conversations I have in my work involve telling families managing the...
That Good Night w/Sunita Puri
In the second in our series on care, we’re talking about care at the end of life. It’s not just...
The Ventilator: Life, Death And The Choices We Make At The End
For much of their lives together, Stephanie Rinka and her husband, John, had ongoing conversations...
The human story of how ventilators came to breathe for us
Robert Truog, who directs the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, co-wrote the...
Sent Home to Die
Sarah Johnson spent her entire life taking care of people — the six children she raised, mostly...
Jewish Perspectives on End-of-Life Care
While Jewish tradition maintains that human life is of infinite value and that its preservation...
Caregiver — Don’t Cry Momma “Gone With The Wind”
It was a late October morning, 2005, and there was a crisp chill in the air. Couldn't decide if I...
How my husband and I spent our final hours together
I remember the day in May 2017 when my husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer. When the...
Health, Hope and Hospice
“The word "hospice" comes from the Latin "hospitium" meaning guesthouse. It was originally...
“We Are Dead, Gone, and Free”: The End of a Frontier Couple
Artist Eric Bealer was living the remote, rugged good life in coastal Alaska with his wife, Pam,...
Barbara Hammer’s exit interview
Hammer is dying. At seventy-nine, she has lived with cancer for thirteen years and has exhausted...
Think you want to die at home? You might want to think twice about that
Many of us think we want to die at home, surrounded by friends and family. Unfortunately, a...
What If We Treated Death Like Birth?
If we treated death like birth, we would make death plans in which we imagined how we wanted to...
Cold Day in January
This day came, and I went into the ALS Clinic on my own. The one time I did. I went to spend a...
Patients Want To Die At Home, But Home Hospice Care Can Be Tough On Families
Even though surveys show it's what most Americans say they want, dying at home is "not all it's...
She Is 96 and Does Not Fear Her Death. But Do Her Children?
It is one of the most vexing chapters of old age: how to navigate not just the inevitable ending,...