Last things
Posted by Vale When I was at school there was a short lived craze for making yourself faint. If I recall, you hyperventilated and then got a friend to squeeze you round the chest, at which point you passed out. It’s now claimed that this is equivalent to a near death experience. There’s a discussion […]
Quote of the day
“Am I dying or is this my birthday?” Lady Nancy Astor, d. 1964 When she woke briefly during her last illness and found all her family around her bedside.
People are still dying of old age. What are the damn medics doing about it?
Extracts from an excellent article in the Washington Post: I know where this phone call is going. I’m on the hospital wards, and a physician in the emergency room downstairs is talking to me about an elderly patient who needs to be admitted to the hospital. The patient is new to me, but the story is […]
Death of a race car
Posted by Vale I have never loved cars. I side with H.G.Wells when he said that everytime he saw an adult on a bike ‘I no longer despair for the future of the human race’. Or Orwell when he said ‘Four wheels bad, two wheels good’. Or something like that. But I do understand that […]
Ash Wednesday – buy now!
Posted by Vale Every age has a genius, a spirit, a particular character. The Victorians, for example, excelled at sentimentality and three volume novels, while, in ancient Greece, philosophers lounged on street corners making public nuisances of themselves. But what of our own age? What do we do that defines us? There are lots of […]
Publishing event of the year!
The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, […]
Atheism and the fear of death
Posted by Vale It’s natural to fear death and you might think that, just as naturally, religion would help you face and overcome your fears. But it ain’t necessarily so. In a recent book, Society Without God, Anne, a 43 year old Hospice nurse from Aarhus in Denmark is interviewed. The author, Robert Zuckerman records […]
Mellified man and the wonder of Wikipedia
Posted by Vale Wikipedia – that glorious monument to collaboration and, sometimes, hearsay – has some marvellously strange pages. One of my favourites is the Mellified man. This is claimed to be an ancient process of preserving bodies through use of honey.Li, a Chinese pharmacologist reports that, “some elderly men in Arabia, nearing the end […]
Death with dignity
Posted by Charles When Meg Holmes was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2009 her husband Andrew started a blog so that he could update friends about her condition. Meg died on 1 October. The following post describes her death. My wife Meg died on the morning of Saturday October 1st in the loving company of […]
Bereavement Counselling in the NHS (Taking the sting out of death)
Posted by Vale Pat is a Bereavement Counsellor working in an NHS Trust hospital. Her job is to help people affected by a death in a hospital, supporting them through their grieving. Pat is the subject of a long article inSaturday’s Guardian. It can be found here. It’s a heartening read. Death in a hospital […]
