It is probably a universal teaching of all cultures that putting a name to a demon helps to decrease its fearsomeness. I sometimes wonder whether the real, perhaps culturally subconscious, reason that...
I recently discussed this with my school's professor of geriatric medicine, Dr. Leo Cooney, who later summarized his viewpoint in two pithy paragraphs of a letter: Most geriatricians are at the forefr...
Bioengineers but by those who know who we are.
We live today in the era not of the art of dying, but of the art of saving life,
There is no way to deter old age from its grim duty, but a life of accomplishment makes up in quality for what it cannot add in quantity.
Share your optimisms and keep your pessimisms to yourself.
Shakespeare has Julius Caesar reflect that: Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.
Perhaps the mere existence of things undone should be a sort of satisfaction in itself, though the idea would appear to be paradoxical. Only one who is long since dead while still seemingly alive does...
Endorphin elevation appears to be an innate physiological mechanism to protect mammals and perhaps other animals against the emotional and physical dangers or terror and pain. It is a survival device,...
Dying begins with the first act of life.
Carolyn had told me that while he was still able, Bob had arranged to have his favorite words from his favorite work of Dickens inscribed on his grave marker, but still I was unprepared for their effe...
And when he died, I was glad. I know it sounds terrible to say that, but I was happy he was relieved of that degrading sickness. I knew he never suffered, and I knew he had no idea what was happening...
All along the way, family members have been experiencing feelings of ambivalence, helplessness, and crisis. They fear what they are seeing, as well as what they have yet to see. No matter how often th...
Unattended and isolated. For it is the promise of spiritual companionship near the end that gives us hope, much more than does the mere offsetting of the fear of being physically without anyone.
The originator of the literary form we call the essay, the sixteenth-century Frenchman Michel de Montaigne, was a social philosopher who viewed mankind through the scrutinizing lens of unadorned and u...
So it was like the old scenario that so often throws a shadow over the last days of people with cancer: we knew—she knew—we knew she knew—she knew we knew—and none of us would talk about it when we we...
Persistence can only break the hearts of those we love and of ourselves as well, not to mention the purse of society that should be spent for the care of others who have not yet lived their allotted t...
Nowadays, very few of us actually witness the deaths of those we love. Not many people die at home anymore, and those who do are usually the victims of drawn-out diseases or chronic degenerative condi...
Nature will always win in the end, as it must if our species is to survive.
Though their doctors dutifully record such distinct entities as stroke, or cardiac failure, or pneumonia, these aged folk have in fact died because something in them has worn out. Long before the days...