Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me

"It is the reason a neighbor knocked on our door to tell my husband that everything happens for a reason.

'I’d love to hear it,' my husband said.

'Pardon?' she said, startled.

'I’d love to hear the reason my wife is dying,' he said, in that sweet and sour way he has.

My neighbor wasn’t trying to sell him a spiritual guarantee. But there was a reason she wanted to fill that silence around why some people die young and others grow old and fussy about their lawns. She wanted some kind of order behind this chaos. Because the opposite of #blessed is leaving a husband and a toddler behind, and people can’t quite let themselves say it: 'Wow. That’s awful.' There has to be a reason, because without one we are left as helpless and possibly as unlucky as everyone else".

They Brought Cookies: For A New Widow, Empathy Eases Death's Pain

"So I'll tell you the positive effect and you know it already: empathy is pain's best antidote. It is, says Robert Burton in his astonishing Anatomy of Melancholy, 'as fire in Winter, shade in Summer, as sleep on the grass to them that are weary, meat and drink to him that is hungry or athirst.'

The pain doesn't go away; but somehow or other, empathy gives the pain meaning, and pain-with-meaning is bearable. I don't actually know how to say what the effect of empathy is, I can only say what it's like. Like magic".

When Your Loved One Is Ready for #Hospice Care - and You Aren't. #HPM

“And I had a lot of questions about hospice care, including whether I could stop it if I changed my mind later. (He told me I could stop it at any time, for any reason, and that if I changed my mind again I could resume the services.) The conversation was incredibly stressful. At one point I realized I was holding my breath.

After answering all my questions, Doug looked at me kindly and said, ‘You know, Marie, the real question for the caregiver is how to help the patient have the highest possible quality of life in the time that is remaining.’

That completely changed my thinking about the situation. It gave me a new and positive goal - to bring Ed as much happiness as possible. It led me to think about all the special things I could do for Ed -- visiting him more often, taking my little Shih Tzu to see him, having that violinist come back and play another concert, reading to him from the newspaper, and buying him even more of the stuffed animals he loved so much.”

Looking Forward. ~ PhotoGrief. #Grief #Bereavement

Photos by Jimmy Edmonds

“These are montages that I make using my son Josh’s image against a background – these are from Mexico while we were filming of the Day of the Dead last year. The original image is of Josh (he died in 2011 aged 22) pretending to be asleep, but it has become one of the main pictures that I remembering him by. What is important for me is that it represents a continuing relationship that I have with him as I re-craft his picture as part of my on going work as a photographer and filmmaker. Photographs we have of our dead love ones are always in the past from when they were still alive – and in that sense they are stuck in history. What we teach on our photography course is that by reworking them and creating new photos we can re-invent the deceased as part of our present lives – its a very cathartic process and does a lot for my own healing – instead of always looking ‘back’ at photos as a way remembering him I am now looking ‘forward’ to the next image I will make with him in it.”

The Gift of Bad News. #Dying #Coping #Healthcare

"We’ve all been told we should live each day as if it were our last, but how many of us truly can? Life is a journey. We’re in the middle of it. When we hear the news, we know — for the first time really know — our journey will end. What do we want from our doctors at that moment? What do they want from us? No matter where we sit, we are infinitely far apart and impossibly close. They have given us something no one else on earth has ever given us before, and we are transformed."

A New Vision for Dreams of the #Dying. #eolc #hpm

"Dr. William Breitbart, chairman of the psychiatry department at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who has written about delirium and palliative care, said that a team’s response must also consider bedside caregivers: “These dreams or visions can be interpreted by family members as comforting, linking them to the legacy of their ancestry.

But if people don’t believe that, they can be distressed. ‘My mother is hallucinating and seeing dead people. Do something about it!’ Dr. Breitbart trains staff to respect the families’ beliefs and help them understand the complexities of delirium.

Some dream episodes occur during what is known as 'mixed-state sleep' — when the boundaries between wakefulness and sleep become fragmented, said Dr. Carlos H. Schenck, a psychiatrist and sleep expert at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Jessica Stone, the teenager with Ewing’s sarcoma, spoke movingly about a dream of her dead dog, Shadow. When she awoke, she said, she saw his long, dark shape alongside her bed.

Dr. Banas, the neurologist, favors the phrase end-of-life experiences. 'I try to normalize it for the family, because how they perceive it can push them away from that bedside or bring them closer,' she said."

Quality of #Death. My Journey with Stage 4 Breast #Cancer.

"We shouldn’t be afraid to talk about what a good quality of death is while balancing a good quality of life. I believe a good quality of life relates more to the application of medical intervention or lack of medical intervention. For me, a good quality of death relates to the amount of grace and love that surrounds me. I am hopeful, it will fuel empowerment and strength as I face my death. I want to find grace and love in myself and the people sharing this journey with me".

"Before You Know It Something's Over". The #Death of a #Parent.

"I want to talk to you about how it feels to spend your whole life grieving, to have your ghosts precede your actuality, to feel that nobody you know will ever truly know you because they never knew him. To recycle fourteen years of material like a song that never gets old, because you’re just so frustrated that there’ll never be a new album, even though everybody else is probably sick of the song and likes your new songs so much better. I want to talk to you about how I got free".

#Denial is Tricky. On #Being. @SharonSalzberg

"At our core, we assume that hiding from pain will somehow keep us from feeling it. Of course, trying to shut our minds off to suffering effectively ensures that it will persist, in some form or another… 

Denial is tricky. Sometimes, we think we are not in denial because we recognize the existence of an uncomfortable feeling, but still turn away from it. Our denial voice might say, “Of course I know I am going to die, but why think about it?”

We need not dig deep into all the possible physical maladies we might experience when we die — that’s not the point of opening up to discomfort. The larger point is that each moment becomes immensely powerful when we strip away various denials. We can recognize our fear of death, of change, of letting go of our attachments, and feel the discomfort of that recognition. By being honest with ourselves about our various forms of suffering, we don’t feel more suffering — we create freedom".

#Dying is About #Living. ~ Metastatic Me

"One lives with a terminal illness by taking each day as it comes.  In the beginning, I would tell myself that I wasn't going to die that day, and that I wasn't going to die the next day or even the next week.  After time, the days started to accrue.  Slowly but surely, plans were made; goals were set.

And so I learned that dying is really about living.  

It's about taking each day for what it is, piecing together something good in it, and moving on to the next day.  It's about planning for the future, while simulatenously planning for a future without you.  It's about understanding the limitations that being sick puts on you, accepting those constraints, and doing things anyway.  It's about simplifying your day to day life to enjoy more time to do the things that bring you joy".

The Geography Of #Sorrow. Francis Weller On #Navigating Our #Losses

"In his book Weller invites us to view grief as a visitor to be welcomed, not shunned. He reminds us that, in addition to feeling pain over the loss of loved ones, we harbor sorrows stemming from the state of the world, the cultural maladies we inherit, and the misunderstood parts of ourselves. He says grief comes in many forms, and when it is not expressed, it tends to harden the once-vibrant parts of us".

Helping #Children #Cope with #ALS

"When a family member has been diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) children have many questions and concerns about the person they know and love. We offer these guidelines as a tool to assist your family when talking or sharing information and personal feelings about ALS. You may also want to share this information with other important adults involved in your children’s lives such as teachers and coaches". 

"How Long Have I Got Left?" ~Dr. Paul Kalanithi

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"I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live".

"My Marriage Didn’t End When I Became a Widow". ~ Dr. Lucy Kalanithi

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"One night recently, alone in bed, I read “A Grief Observed” by C.­S. Lewis, and I came across the observation that “bereavement is not the truncation of married love but one of its regular phases.” He writes that “what we want is to live our marriage well and faithfully through that phase, too.” Yes, I breathed. Bereavement is more than learning to separate from a spouse. Though I can no longer comfort Paul, the other vows I made on our wedding day — to love Paul, to honor and keep him — stretch well beyond death. The commitment and loyalty, my desire to do right by him, especially as I raise our daughter, will never end". 

Lucy Kalanithi is an internist at Stanford University’s Clinical Excellence Research Center. She wrote the epilogue to her late husband Paul Kalanithi’s forthcoming book, “When Breath Becomes Air.”

How one couple’s loss led to a push for psychological care for kids with cancer.

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"The standards say families should be educated early on about palliative care and its role in helping to “reduce suffering throughout the disease process.” And they say children with cancer should receive “developmentally appropriate” information to prepare them for the treatments and procedures they will undergo".

Supporting Grieving Preschoolers. The Dougy Centre.

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"Explaining death to a young child can feel overwhelming and intimidating. These tips may help you navigate how to talk with and support grieving preschoolers after a death". 

Op-Ed 'I have terminal cancer. And I'm dying in a yearish.'

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"I understand that my infinitesimally tiny piece in all this is coming to a close. Letting go will be difficult, but death has its own clock. So I will take solace in the idea that, once gone, I may come to occupy a small space in the hearts of the people who loved me most. And perhaps from there, I will be a source of a few simple reminders: Time is limited. Life is miraculous. And we are beautiful".

"You don't get over bereavement, you get on with it": Mumsnet.

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"Have the boys 'got over the worst of it'? Who knows? We take every day as it comes. We are on a journey that takes us on a bumpy and unpredictable ride, with little in the way of helpful signage. Just because we have faced a huge trauma, does not mean that we are exempt from facing further difficulties en route".

Words to Live By...

"There’s an irony about end-of-life conversations. When done correctly, they’re really not about the end at all. In fact, they are probably more about life than any other conversation you’ll ever have".

The Year I Ran Away from Christmas: A Mother’s Perspective on Grief and the Holidays.

"I have no need to run away during the holidays anymore. The other day my daughter, now a young woman, reminded me that Christmas is her favourite time of the year. I smiled and said, 'It’s mine too’."

Click the image above to read more about Judy's experience.