Regrets of the dying
Over on Inspiration and Chai Bronnie Ware describes how, working in palliative care, she would often find herself listening to people’s regrets – all the things they wished they had done in their lives. Some common themes emerged. This is her top five: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true […]
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 […]
The Letting Go
First published in the New York Times by SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE It had rained heavily the night before. The steep stone steps of the ghat are slick and slippery, and when my father pulls me onto the boat, the water feels more stable than the ground. The boatman rows out toward the open river, and the […]
Death in the community
Beyond the unappetising business of flogging pre-need plans to the tottering classes, undertakers do next to nothing to educate the public about funerals. They seek to be seen as public-spirited. They do good stunts, raise money for the hospice here, the air ambulance there. But how many stage events to raise awareness of the […]
Timing your exit
Posted by Charles Cowling Extracted from an article in yesterday’s New York Times: I hope you had the chance to read and reread Dudley Clendinen’s splendid essay, “The Good Short Life”. Clendinen is dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S. If he uses all the available medical technology, it will leave him, in a few years’ […]
Home Death by Nell Dunn
Posted by Pippa Wilcox I wish I could tell you that the real-life stories portrayed in Nell Dunn’s play Home Death are over-dramatised. But they aren’t. It seems to be a terrifyingly random lottery out there in terms of whether or not you will stumble across the sort of care package which will result […]
The Home Death Movement
I’ve been reading an interesting research report published last month in Australia. Its title: Bringing our Dying Home: Creating community at the end of life. It examines how networks of unpaid carers can supplement the services of professional carers and enable dying people to die at home. It shows that the lot of unpaid […]
HealthTalkOnline
I’ve just stumbled on the best website in Britain and can’t believe it’s taken me til now. It is run by excellent people and is incredibly informative. It also tells it as it is. Where end of life issues are concerned there’s not nearly as much of this about as there needs to be. This site […]
Roundup
Here’s a roundup of news stories I’ve tweeted in the last fortnight. It looks rather a lot — but I try never to fob you off with quantity at the expense of quality. I hate having my own time wasted, so I try hard not to waste yours. Take your pick and enjoy — or […]
A time to die
Every week in the Spectator magazine Peter Jones takes an occurrence or development in contemporary society and politics and considers it in the light of what the ancients did when faced with the same circumstances. This week he considers the art of dying. I’d now bung you a link but I can’t: the Speccie does not […]
