Cleaning Out Their Belongings After Death
First, if you don’t have to clean out belongings, don’t for awhile, wait even months if necessary. There can be great comfort found in putting on an unwashed sweater of...
Something to Think About: a blog on end of life
Grief
Does Everyone Need Grief Counseling?
Counseling is a support offering, a choice. Some personalities would never consider counseling. They would not be comfortable sharing their personal thoughts and life with someone else no matter how professional...
We Are Born, We Experience, And Then We Die
... if we would educate ourselves before we need the information, before someone we care about is dying, before we are faced with a life threatening illness, or before someone we...
The Scar In Your Heart: Grief In End of Life Care
You asked why your relationship to your hospice work was affected following the death of your dad. I think because every time you entered a patient's home and life it...
FOUR “NAUGHTIES” FOR END OF LIFE
Keeping Secrets: “Don’t tell mom.” Don’t say that she could die.” Don’t talk to her about “sad” things.” “Pretend everything is going to be alright.” Mom lives inside of her body....
Dying Scared
I get a lot of letters like the one I’ve edited below. We, as a culture, are so unprepared for witnessing a death. We have no accurate role models. We...
In A Time Of Overwhelming Loss...
When someone we know or are close to dies we expect to grieve. We recognize our sadness but often we don’t recognize our impulsiveness to clean the house, or our...
Caring for a Dying Son
Our children are not supposed to die before we do. I cannot think of any grief more intense than watching our child deteriorate before our eyes. We grieve their dying...
How Do You Grieve a Violent Death?
Sudden death by accident, suicide and certainly by violence intensifies those normal grief responses. Everything we feel with normal grief is as if we are being held under a magnifying...
How To Talk About Approaching Death
Our job as an end of life specialist is to address the elephant in the room, to be direct and honest in the gentlest way possible. We are not doing...
Bereavement Support is Important at Any Time, Now, it's Vital
Hospice Bereavement support, as well as any bereavement support program (church, Community Support, Senior Activity Program) is important during the best of times. Now it is vital. Here are my recommendations;...
In This Time of Great Fear, DYING 101
People don’t die like they do in the movies—alive one minute, saying something profound and dead the next. There is a way that the body dies. A way it is...