It is one of the most vexing chapters of old age: how to navigate not just the inevitable ending, but the days and months immediately before it. As the bonds of support and dependency change, how do we tell our children that it is O.K. to say goodbye? And how do we...
Earlier this year, my grandmother was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer and was told she had only a few months left to live. When she found out that she had a limited time to put things in order, most of us didn’t know how to react. Of course, we were all...
There are a lot of articles out there telling you how to talk to your family about death as if it’s a complicated thing to do that requires special care and attention. It doesn’t. I wonder about the personal lives of the people who write advice about...
But it was upon her death that I realized, in addition to being my best friend, she was my Death Buddy: the one person I could talk to about absolutely anything without fear that she would judge me, find me weird, or rush to change the subject — even if the subject...
Schutt spent four years as her mom’s primary caregiver, writing songs about the dark and the light of her mother’s journey from diagnosis to death of ovarian cancer. Kate wants us all to know how to show up for our grieving friends so they don’t feel alone with their...
Sometimes when someone is dying, we’re so worried about medications and trying to keep them comfortable — and trying to keep ourselves together despite the grief — that we don’t take advantage of our last days with that person. Accepting that...
When discussing death, the words we choose can speak volumes. In the 1970s and 1980s, Susan Sontag wrote about the metaphors that surround TB, AIDS and cancer, arguing that their use can add to the suffering of patients, stigmatising them and encouraging...
How do you tell someone that they’re seriously ill, or even dying? Chrissie Giles explores how doctors learn and how they deal with the stress and trauma, for both their patients and themselves. Listen to or download an audiobook of this story...
Bridget Park is a high school senior from Reno, Nevada. Inspired by the tragic loss of her brother, Bridget wrote her debut memoir at the age of 15 in the hopes that her story would encourage others to find healthy ways of grieving. In this talk, Bridget shares her...
We recently asked our community members what’s your best advice for someone who’s currently caring for a loved on that’s dying? Here’s what you had to say. Bobbi Carducci: Be with your loved one every moment you can. Having been at the side of...
Words matter The list goes on and on about things that we don’t want to talk about — death is at the top of that list. We talk around it instead of about it. No amount of language or magical thinking will bring people back. It doesn’t give power to...
You’d think losing your mother would be the worst part of losing your mother. But for Annie Broadbent, whose mother succumbed to cancer in 2011, one of the hardest parts of the loss was watching her friends and family become paralyzed by the fear of saying or...
I didn’t need to be schooled in the realities of long-term care: The costs for my mother, who is 86 and who, for the past eighteen months, has not been able to walk, talk, or to address her most minimal needs and, to boot, is absent a short-term memory, come in at...
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