Something to Think About

When I was 17, I was told to sit with a dying patient — alone. I didn’t know then how profoundly that moment would shape my life’s work...

Knowledge is important for the person dying because they are processing their life on many levels. It is important for the watchers because it is our final opportunity to connect,...

What many, maybe even most, people do is trade that moment for a gamble on the future. We do this gambling with a lot of life occurrences. But we place...

As caregivers, we want so much to do the “right thing” for our special person. We know death is coming but still try to do all we can to stop...

We human beings are complicated creatures. We approach death in the way we have approached living and according to our personality. Our belief systems are part of that living. Sometimes...

What to do? First, look at the wording you wrote to me "could be dying." Actually, everyone is dying. Everyday we are one step closer to the end of our life. You're...

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...

 Know that all of these signs of approaching death, whether indicating months or weeks, are just guideposts. Some people will show all of them...

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...

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...

Our frontline workers: nurses, nursing assistants, doctors, hospital employees, first responders, housekeeping, grocery, delivery, and transportation personnel, all people who are out front while most of us shelter in place,...

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...

There are many of the same circumstances with today’s coronavirus as we faced with  HIV/AIDS in the early years— lack of medical knowledge, lack of guidance, and fear. I think...

Isolation from others is teaching me this about my self ——- I do a lot for others, for their thoughts of me, why else do I wear makeup? Get dressed?...

We do this all the time. We enter tense situations where people are frightened and unsure, with people who have never seen us before. This is what we do: We create...

In our personal situations we may never have an answer to the question did he know or had the process started months earlier. What I suspect is that at some...

Hospice has worked with nursing facilities for many years now. Our relationship  and interactions with patients and their families is now better understood and better defined. That said, some nursing facilities...

...I remember being with my mother in my hospice Medical Director’s office. He was explaining to my mother his medical findings as they related to her illness. I, being a...

We can be as much at a loss when our pet is dying as we are when a person is dying but there doesn’t seem to be the support and...

Hospice can not take the experience and sadness of a loved one dying away. Our goal is to help the family create a sacred experience, to help their loved one...

The hours before actual death is very scary, a "I don't know what to do" time, for anyone present. Someone who knows the normal natural way a person dies can...