death-and-dying

There is not a single person I have met in my lifetime who is comfortable talking about death. It__ the biggest downside to our youth-centric culture. Death is a bummer, so let__ not talk about it. Let__ hide it away and hope it never strikes close to home.

There is a thin line that separates life from death, but once it's crossed, it becomes as large as an ocean, and so treacherous that it__ impossible to cross back.

They drove farther north like that. In perfect loving antagonism. It occurred to Ted that maybe Marty was like all the red and gold leaves he saw burning on the trees. In nature, it seems, things reached their most vibrant and beautiful right at the point of death, flaming out with all they had__hy not natural man? His father was red, green, yellow, and gold, like a beautiful bird falling from the sky. Parodoxical undressing again.

Last Comforts_ was born when one nagging question kept arising early in my journey as a hospice volunteer. Why were people coming into hospice care so late in the course of their illness? That question led to many others that rippled out beyond hospice care. Are there better alternatives to conventional skilled nursing home operations? How are physicians and nurses educated about advanced illness and end-of-life care? What are more effective ways of providing dementia care? What are the unique challenges of minority and LGBT people? What is the role of popular media in our death-denying culture? What has been the impact of public policy decisions about palliative and hospice care? The book is part memoir of lessons learned throughout my experiences with patients and families as a hospice volunteer; part spotlight on the remarkable pathfinders and innovative programs in palliative and late-life care; and part call to action. I encourage readers _ particularly my fellow baby boomers -- not only to make their wishes and goals clear to friends and family, but also to become advocates for better care in the broader community.

Posthumous: It sounds like the name of a Roman gladiator, an unconquered gladiator. At least that__ what poor Posthumous would like to believe. It gives him courage.

Fran had from an unsuitably early age been attracted by the heroic death, the famous last words, the tragic farewell. Her parents had on their shelves a copy of Brewer's 'Dictionary of Phase and fable', a book which, as a teenager, she would morbidly browse for hours. One of her favourite sections was 'Dying Sayings', with its fine mix of the pious, the complacent, the apocryphal, the bathetic and the defiant. Artists had fared well: Beethoven was alleged to have said 'I shall hear in heaven'; the erotic painter Etty had declared 'Wonderful! Wonderful this death!'; and Keats had died bravely, generously comforting his poor friend Severn.Those about to be executed had clearly had time to prepare a fine last thought, and of these she favoured the romantic Walter Raleigh's, 'It matters little how the head lies, so the heart be right'. Harriet Martineau, who had suffered so much as a child from religion, as Fran had later discovered, had stoically remarked, 'I see no reason why the existence of Harriet Martineau should be perpetuated', an admirably composed sentiment which had caught the child Fran's attention long before she knew who Harriet Martineau was. But most of all she had liked the parting of Siward the Dane who had commended his men: 'Lift me up that I may die standing, not lying down like a cow'.

Part of us did die. Literally - that tissue on your face, the part they removed. It died. And you can't recover from any kind of death without mourning it.

We do not look for reason for logic in the passionate entreaties of those who are sick unto death; we are stung with the recollection of a thousand slighted opportunities of fulfilling the wishes of those who will soon pass away from among us: and do they ask us for the future happiness of our lives, we lay it at their feet, and will it away from us.

We would like to think of death as a release from the pressures of existence, but this is a fatally mistaken thought: it is the ultimate culmination of those pressures.

All the same I fear what happens when we expand the terrain of medical practice to include actively assisting people with speeding their death. I am less worried about the abuse of these powers than I am about dependence on them.

Death is what happens when you die.

Death, it turns out, is the mother of all conflicts.

Death is permanent. There__ no coming back if you get off the ferryman__ boat.

A paradigm shift of viewing palliative care or hospice as a gift instead of seeing it as giving up has the potential to change the way we experience advanced age.

None of us are getting out of here alive".

If we are to welcome the elderly into our communities and support them to stay there for as long as possible, if we are to attend to the social needs of our elderly citizens both inside and out of institutions, then we need both government intervention and funding, along with the community's engagement and help.

As Ossie Jones crept out of his body and into the mist, his heart murmured till it was silent.

If I could control tomorrow's haze,The darkened shore wouldn't bother me,If I can't control the web we weave,My life will be lost in the fallen leaves...