death-of-a-loved-one

Death is the great incorruptible corruptor

Death occurs in unexpected times.

[Charlie is dying:]After what seemed a long while, but hadn__ been, Marsh gave Paulette__ hand a warm and caring squeeze. __hey__e here for him,_ she said.But their heavenly visitors didn__ take him right away. They had to make room for the chaos of modern medical urgencies. To get out of the way of well-trained professionals who had dedicated their lives to holding back Heaven.Choppers are just as noisy and turbulent as we imagine them to be. One tore in over the hills and shattered every bit of peace Charlie otherwise could have lost himself into.In an instant the Med-Evac team was all over him. In the midst of that blatant orchestrated chaos Paulette fought to find her peace, and to hold him inside it.__ang on, buddy,_ techs kept telling him. __on__ go leaving us now. You just hang in there.__ut they didn__ understand, Paulette thought. It was his time.The chopper made a horrible racket carrying him off. Marsh, Paulette, and Ailana held their peace as its winds whipped their world into a froth.Harve__ face twisted with something that might conceivably have been rage.Then, all of a sudden, the birds sang, as though someone had given them a cue. __o that__ what it__ like,_ Marsha said, very softly.__he afterlife.__y God, it__ so beautiful.

We die a day at a time

He wanted to argue like this forever. This was better than nothing. There was no exhausting his anger at his father, and every word, however well intentioned or intentionally barbed, was a pull at a scab on his bloody heart. It was too late for any of this. There could ultimately be no healing. Marty had terminal cancer, and so did the two men have a cancer between them. They were terminal together, as father and son. They remained, momentarily exhausted, but it was really only that quiet between lightning and thunder as sound lags behind speed. The lightning had cracked the ground already, you just hadn't heard it yet.

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.

I sat down in a chair by the bed. The house got altogether still again, and I thought he was asleep. Just ever so quietly I reached over and laid my hand on his shoulder.He said, 'I love you too, Hannah."He didn't last long after that. Death had become his friend. They say that people, if they want to, can let themselves slip away when the time comes. I think that is what Nathan did. He was not false or greedy. When the time came to go, he went.

the only way to get over a death is by seeing it as a life completed, instead of a life interrupted.

The world didn't end with a whimper or a bang. Your life finished in complete silence. Gone in a blink. And then there was nothing.

I felt guilty that I hadn't thought of Kizuki right away, as if I had somehow abandoned him. Back in my room, though, I came to think of it this way: two and a half years have gone by since it happened, and Kizuki is still seventeen years old. Not that this means my memory of him has faded. The things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new. What I want to say is this: I'm going to turn twenty soon. Part of what Kizuki and I shared when we were sixteen and seventeen has already vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. I can't explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably understand what I felt and what I am trying to say.

Without guidance and support for patients and families approaching death, there may be unnecessary conflict, confusion, and trauma that linger long after the passing of a loved one.

The world slides, the world goes, and death makes equal the rich and the poor

If the push towards life sustaining technology were balanced with options for comfort care in both medical school training and the healthcare culture, more people would have the chance to transition to death with dignity and grace.

Every living thing dies, Art. That__ why we cherish it while we have it. That__ why we respect the decisions our loved ones make for themselves. That__ why we love, and why we care, and why we hurt. Because everything dies.

Death descended like a theatrical storm over the Drakensberg Mountains, stranding me while it ran its course.

When I reflect on the stories of death supported by hospice care and contrast it with our story depicting an absence of support, I find myself dealing with envy and anger. I have channeled those emotions into this book with the hope that hearing our story might give someone else a chance to create a better ending to the life of a loved one.

Though we are terrorized by death, it's not different from birth, it just happens

We all emerge into this material soup, mix about with the meat and potatoes of life, and then slip away, back to the primordial germination whence we came. Nascence is a strange business: we forget what we were doing only to come forth and continually forget what we were doing perpetually over the course of a lifetime, until it is time to quit this plane through some unseen and ethereal vomitorium, and presumably forget that we had forgotten all over again.