Want to Be Happy? Think Like an Old Person - The New York Times

Do contented people live longer or do people become contented as they have more life experience?

"Gerontologists call this the paradox of old age: that as people’s minds and bodies decline, instead of feeling worse about their lives, they feel better. In memory tests, they recall positive images better than negative; under functional magnetic resonance imaging, their brains respond more mildly to stressful images than the brains of younger people."

Want to Be Happy? Think Like an Old Person - The New York Times

Why you should make end-of-life care decisions now - LA Times

"The incapacitated ill are profoundly disenfranchised, and the manipulation of their bodies is extraordinarily invasive and consequential."

Why you should make end-of-life care decisions now - LA Times

A Meditation on Grief - Jack Kornfield

"We need to respect our tears. Without a wise way to grieve, we can only soldier on, armored and unfeeling, but our hearts cannot learn and grow from the sorrows of the past. To meditate on grief, let yourself sit, alone or with a comforting friend. Take the time to create an atmosphere of support. When you are ready, begin by sensing your breath. Feel your breathing in the area of your chest. This can help you become present to what is within you.

Take one hand and hold is gently on your heart as if you were holding a vulnerable human being. You are. As you continue to breathe, bring to mind the loss or pain you are grieving. Let the story, the images, the feelings comes naturally. Hold them gently. Take your time. Let the feelings come layer by layer, a little at a time.

Keep breathing softly, compassionately. Let whatever feelings are there, pain and tears, anger and love, fear and sorrow, come as they will. Touch them gently. Let them unravel out of your body and mind. Make space for any images that arise. Allow the whole story. Breathe and hold it all with tenderness and compassion. Kindness for it all, for you and for others.

The grief we carry is part of the grief of the world. Hold it gently. Let it be honored. You do not have to keep it in anymore. You can let it go into the heart of compassion; you can weep. Releasing the grief we carry is a long, tear-filled process. Yet it follows the natural intelligence of the body and heart. Trust it, trust the unfolding."


A Meditation on Grief - Jack Kornfield

Recipes for a Tidy and Tasty Death - The New York Times

 "Charles Lamb, the English essayist, hoped his last breath would be inhaled through a pipe and exhaled in a pun. We can’t all go out with such style. Two books are here to help us prepare. In music terms, these books — Margareta Magnusson’s “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning” and Perre Coleman Magness’s “The Southern Sympathy Cookbook” — will assist you not like roadies, but like end-of-the-roadies. "

Recipes for a Tidy and Tasty Death - The New York Times

The Art of Living Lighter

The Art of Living Lighter

Immortality at Midnight - The New York Times

"There I am, then, my body seeded with cancer that has recurred and may return, whereas now the air is sweet and quiet, with only me conscious, and I can inch forward into futures I weave for the ones I must leave behind. May they prosper and thrive through a series of tomorrows I will not experience but cherish envisioning. For they need to find — oh, please let them find! — love elsewhere and abundantly. Yes, here I am, not the object of concern or pity that I will become later again, as before. But at this hour — because of a shivering or a silvering — alight with the frisson of being unknown in the night’s oasis, hugging my captivated self so as to capture a sliver of exhilaration and bring back a swatch for those circumstances when I will need to remember what it was all for. "

Immortality at Midnight - The New York Times

Difficult Sibling Relationships During the Holidays - AgingCare.com

"[E]xpecting family members and friends to automatically offer assistance and know what tasks they can help with will only lead to disappointment. Asking early on is best, before everyone is convinced that you have nothing else to do except provide care. However, caregiving is notorious for sneaking up on people. The responsibilities can instantly increase, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and alone. It’s not always easy to anticipate needing assistance or when you will reach your limit. Do yourself a favor and ask for help well before you think you need it."

Difficult Sibling Relationships During the Holidays - AgingCare.com

Poem by Henry Scott Holland

Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away to the next room. I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other,  That, we still are. Call me by my old familiar name. Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect. Without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same that it ever was. There is absolute unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?  I am but waiting for you. For an interval. Somewhere. Very near. Just around the corner. All is well.

When a parent gets too old to live on their own but doesn't want help. - The Washington Post

"My insistence that we preserve Mom’s autonomy for her sake, not ours — so that she would not feel like a burden — only made things worse. I refused to acknowledge that her overwhelming sadness and fear made it impossible for her to assess the situation clearly. I wanted her to make the choice, and I prolonged everyone’s agony by exploring unrealistic options in my desire to let her have her way."

When a parent gets too old to live on their own but doesn't want help. - The Washington Post

When a parent gets too old to live on their own but doesn't want help. - The Washington Post

"My insistence that we preserve Mom’s autonomy for her sake, not ours — so that she would not feel like a burden — only made things worse. I refused to acknowledge that her overwhelming sadness and fear made it impossible for her to assess the situation clearly. I wanted her to make the choice, and I prolonged everyone’s agony by exploring unrealistic options in my desire to let her have her way."

When a parent gets too old to live on their own but doesn't want help. - The Washington Post

The Greatest Loss -- The Death of a Child

The Washington Post profiles Joyal Mulheron, "a collector of the worst kinds of stories. The ones no one wants to hear." Her baby daughter's death was devastating.

All the while she replayed the events surrounding her daughter’s life and death, mulling the circumstances that compounded the pain, and the kindnesses that offered slivers of relief. She thought often of the anonymous stranger who gave up a bed in the hospital sleep center so that she could rest for a few hours without being far from Eleanora. And she thought about the calls from the insurance company, asking when, precisely, they expected their daughter to die.

“Do you think she’s going to live for 10 days? Or do you think she’s going to live for more than 10 days? Because I have to fill out different paperwork,” Joyal remembers the insurance representative saying.

Joyal began applying her policy brain to the issue and found that parents who’ve lost children are a vastly understudied group. Yet the little research that has been done shows devastating results. “The National Academies of Science said in a report that child death is the most stressful [event] and enduring type of stress a person can experience,” she says. Other studies showed that losing a child results in increased likelihood of psychiatric hospitalization, cardiac problems and premature death.

High-Tech Suicide Machine Makes Death a Painless, Peaceful, Optimal Way to Go | Alternet

"The Sarco was developed by Nitschke’s organization, Exit International, which bills itself as an “aid-in-dying” organisation. The machine includes a base topped by a translucent chamber perfectly proportioned to comfortably fit a human which. After settling in the pod, the user will push a button and the chamber will start to “fill up with liquid nitrogen to bring the oxygen level down to about 5 percent.” Around the minute mark, the user will become unconscious, experiencing almost no pain, according to the Newsweek report. (The doctor describes the changes as akin to “an airplane cabin depressurizing.”) After death comes, which is fairly swift, the chamber can be used as a coffin. The base, just fyi, is reusable."

High-Tech Suicide Machine Makes Death a Painless, Peaceful, Optimal Way to Go | Alternet

Readers share their most intense postmortem social media moments

 "In the internet age, it often seems that what is digital may never die. Even when our loved ones slip their mortal coil, their social media profiles soldier on. Though Facebook, Google, and other companies have developed protocols for shutting down the accounts of the dead, many if not most of us are still caught off guard. When my grandfather died, for example, “he” continued to contact me through his LinkedIn profile. In the days and weeks after his funeral, I got emails like, “[Your dead grandfather] wants to connect with you on LinkedIn!” and “[Your dead grandfather] congratulated you on your promotion!” Eventually, my grandmother admitted to using his account. She ultimately agreed to shut it down. I was in turn mortified, nauseated, and eventually resigned myself to mild amusement."

Readers shared their most intense postmortem social media moments.