For over 40 years, I’ve sat at the bedside of people who were dying — watching, listening, learning, and guiding. Again and again, I saw families with the same questions and concerns: What’s happening? Is it normal? Is something bad happening? What can I do? What shouldn’t I do? What’s coming next? That’s why I […]
Last week would have been my husband’s 91st birthday. As a family, we decided to celebrate his birthday all together. His children, grandchildren, and two close friends gathered for dinner and sharing. There were 9 of us. To honor him, we were each to bring a memento that reminded us of him or that was […]
I was recently at a home health conference. Why was I there? Talking about end of life with home health workers? Yes, absolutely. Patients die while having home health services just like people die in hospitals, nursing and residential care facilities. End of life knowledge is beneficial to the patient and family no matter what […]
Dear Barbara, how do you get a terminally-ill patient to accept hospice care? Most of us know hospice takes care of people who are dying. Since we are a death-denying society, no one wants to hear that they need hospice services. You may be wondering who counts as “people who are dying” and at what […]
Someone recently asked me, “What do Hospice volunteers do?” She was interested in becoming one. She was most interested in helping in an area most people are afraid to even acknowledge. What a special person it is who aspires to be a hospice volunteer! So to answer her question — they do a lot!!! But […]
Patient, family, and caregiver support and education takes time. A fifteen-minute blood pressure and cognitive status check is not what end of life care is about — that’s home health. End of life care is about bonding and developing trust, not just with the patient, but with the family and the caregiver, as well. The […]
Dear Barbara, you write about the signs of approaching death for what you call a “gradual” death. Would you write about what happens during a “sudden” death? There are two ways to die: gradual, from disease or old age; or a fast, unexpected death. I’ve written a lot about gradual death and its process, about […]
All the space between birth and death is living. YET we tend to conceptually segregate our final experience off from all that has preceded it. The experience of dying a gradual death is an important, integral part of life. It is an opportunity to write our final chapter, to define the ending of our story. […]
Life. We are born, we experience, and then we die. A beginning, a middle, and an ending. What is interesting to me is the similarity between the beginning and the ending. The beginning: we go through labor to get here. Some of us have a short labor — mom sneezes and out we come. Others […]
A Hospice Director recently asked me how to use my materials in her program. That request got me thinking that others might be interested in my reason and vision for writing the end of life booklets. My first booklet, Gone From My Sight, was written to give the families I was caring for guidance for […]
