I debated sending out this blog — it might be a bit scary, too unsettling. Maybe ignorance truly is bliss. So this is your warning! If you are in your late 70’s or above this may be unsettling to read. The circle of life. We are born, we experience, and then we die. We go […]
Hospice volunteers step into families’ lives at one of the most private moments they will ever experience. Preparing them for this intimate work requires understanding and education. Hospice volunteers are non-medical community members who contribute their time to give support to people and their caregivers as death approaches. They have generally never met the family they […]
When my husband of 62 years died, I struggled with learning how to be a “me” instead of a “we.” He had done the finances and house and yard maintenance. I did the everyday running of the house – cooking and other day to day tasks. We generally watched the TV shows and movies that […]
I was a hospice nurse for a hospice that was just getting started. This was in 1985, when all hospices in the U.S. were just getting started. Part of our goal was to be with the patient and their family at the moment of death. To do that, we had an on-call, 24/7 system. Now […]
If we end of life caregivers are providing care for those approaching death, why are we not with them during the moments they are actually dying? Everything we do leads up to that moment of death – that is our arrival point. I know it sounds unsettling, but death is the end result of our work. […]
The life cycle. We are born, we experience, and then we die. What I find interesting is that the beginning and the ending are similar but reversed. There are two ways to be born, vaginally or by cesarean section. With a C-section, one minute you are floating in a warm, quiet place and the next […]
When I was 17, a junior in high school, I worked on weekends as a nurse’s aide in a small midwestern hospital. One day the head nurse told me to go sit with a patient and tell her when she was dead. Talk about being scared! The only previous experience I had with death was […]
When it comes to death and dying and preparing advance directives, most of us are ostriches, our heads in the sand, stuck in a “not me or anyone close to me” kind of denial. There is a “not now, I don’t want to talk about it” mentality. Is it a fear that exploring the possibilities […]
When we have experienced the loss of someone significant in our lives, normal holiday stress becomes magnified by “He’s not here. I miss her. What would he think? What would she do?” Tension adds to grief. Stress adds to grief. Fear adds to grief. Really, most emotions affect the intensity of our grieving. This year […]
I have said many times, “There are two ways to die — fast or gradual.” Today, I am going to address the control we have over our dying. Yes, we have limited control over the time that we die. The operative word here is “limited.” I don’t know as much about fast deaths, alive one […]
