Go gentle
Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country … Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never […]
Good question, Poppy
In 2010/11, 40,000 women attended NCT antenatal classes. This is on top of regular meetings with midwives and GPs. Mumsnet gets 50 million page views per month. We clearly want information badly. So why do we prepare ourselves for birth and death so differently? Read the whole of Poppy Mardall’s article in the Huffington Post […]
An Experiential Enquiry into Death & Dying
Experiential retreat run by The Sammasati Project: An Experiential Enquiry into Death & Dying — 6-10 March 2013 An intense and tender process, this workshop provides an opportunity to gather the experience, knowledge, and skills needed to prepare for our own dying. Not only will this impact how we face our own death but how […]
The unintended consequence of promoting longevity
Michael Wolff describes caring for his eldery, dementing mother in New York magazine. It’s a long piece and it will concentrate your mind. You’ll brood on it. Warning: once you start, you won’t be able to put it down. …what I feel most intensely when I sit by my mother’s bed is a crushing sense […]
End of Life Planning Seminar
We are pleased to advertise this upcoming seminar held by Colin Moore, a good friend of the GFG: End of Life Planning Seminar This seminar shows you how to create different funeral ceremonies through powerpoint and exercises. You will learn about the many funeral choices available and how to discuss these options with families. We […]
Modern death ‘reverberates like a handclap in an empty auditorium.’
There’s a good death piece over at the New York Times that you might like. It’s by Bess Lovejoy, author of the about-to-be-published Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses. Here are some taster extracts: Over the last century, as Europeans and North Americans began sequestering the dying and dead away from everyday life, […]
What’s for afters?
Much attention has been accorded to Eben Alexander’s account of his recent near-death experience. While NDEs are two a penny, this NDE was experienced by a Harvard-educated neurosurgeon, no less. This lent Alexander’s NDE a clear edge in terms of credibility. It is easy enough to write off the NDEs of ordinary people as delusions. […]
Ready, steady, gone.
“Most of us do not want to die in the ICU tethered to tubes — not the quality of life we expect. Yet only 30 percent of us have made arrangements to prevent this from happening. Death and dying is a tough subject for us to broach. Be aware that very few of us will […]
Time’s up, take yourself out
A theme that we like to explore on this blog is the way in which longevity has reconfigured the landscape of dying. The blessing of long life has its downside: protracted decline. We are likely to linger longer, much longer, than our forebears. There’s a physical cost in chronic illness and possibly, also, mental enfeeblement. […]
Learning to dance with death
Posted by Vale I was reading the vision statement for the Dying Matters Coalition recently (as you do) and stubbed my toe on their ambition to address death, dying and bereavement in a way that: ’will involve a fundamental change in society in which dying, death and bereavement will be seen and accepted as the […]
