Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Nichole Chung: I Thought I'd Get to See My Mother Again. Then the Pandemic Hit

Nicole Chung writes about mourning her mother in a time of COVID-19.

 

This year on my mother’s birthday, in October, I woke up from one of many dreams I’ve had about her since her death. I’d been sitting with family and friends in my grandmother’s backyard, our lawn chairs scattered across a carpet of sun-dappled grass. We were all talking, sharing memories of my mom. I don’t remember the specific stories, but I know there was joy, more laughter than tears—even though, in my dream, my mom was also gone.

Like so many grieving families in 2020, we haven’t been able to gather or mourn together. My mother died of cancer in May, and my husband, kids and I had to watch the small funeral service via livestream from across the country.  

...

Since she died, many people have asked me if I feel a lack of “closure” because of all the moments missed. My father died 2½ years ago, and I was at his funeral, and I still don’t feel anything like closure. It’s an open wound. It always will be.

 

 


I Thought I'd Get to See My Mother Again. Then the Pandemic Hit

Monday, September 21, 2020

Poem: Death is Nothing

 


Death Is Nothing
 
Death is nothing.
I have only walked into the next room.
I am me. You are you.
What I was for you, in your heart, I am still.
Call me by the name you have always given me.
Talk to me the way you always have.
Do not change your tone of voice.
Do not look solemn or sad.
Continue to laugh at what made us laugh together.
Pray, smile.
Think of me.
Pray for me.
Let my name be spoken at home
The way it always has
without emphasis of any kind.
Without an overhanging shadow.
Life’s significance is all that it has always been.
The seams have not been broken, the thread has not been cut.
Why should I no longer be in your thoughts
Simply because I am no longer in your sight?
I am not far, just on the other side of the road.
You see?  All is well.

Henry Scott-Holland

 

 

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

The Artist's Wife - Lena Olin and Bruce Dern


Claire (Lena Olin) lives a quiet domestic life in the Hamptons as the wife of celebrated artist Richard Smythson (Bruce Dern). Once a promising painter herself, Claire now lives in the shadow of her husband’s illustrious career. While preparing work for his final show, Richard’s moods become increasingly erratic, and he is diagnosed with dementia. As his memory and behavior deteriorate, she shields his condition from the art community while trying to reconnect him with his estranged daughter and grandson from a previous marriage. Challenged by the loss of her world as she knew it, Claire must now decide whether to stand with Richard on the sidelines or step into the spotlight herself.

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Poem: Unveiling

Unveiling 


In the cemetery

a mile away
from where we used to live,
my aunts and mother
my father and uncles lie
in two long rows,
almost the way
they used to sit around
the long planked table
at family dinners.
And walking beside
the graves today, down
one straight path
and up the next,
I don't feel sad, exactly,
just left out a bit,
as if they kept
from me the kind
of grown-up secret
they used to share
back then, something
I'm not quite ready yet
to learn.

Linda Pasten

Speaking Grief: A New Documentary

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SPEAKING GRIEF is a public media initiative aimed at creating a more grief-aware society by validating the experience of grievers and helping to guide those who wish to support them.

Sunday, August 2, 2020

Don't Say "I Know How You Feel" -- Suicide Grief is Different

"Don't say, 'I know how you feel."

As much as I knew my midwife’s assistant was hurting, too, and trying to find connection, she didn’t truly understand what I was going through; I felt unseen in the complexity of my fresh grief. 
“Don’t place value judgments on the suicide, such as ‘It was a selfish choice, a sin, an act of weakness, or a lack of faith or love or strength.'

But don’t feel afraid to say the name of the person who died, to share your memories of that person, to create space for the survivor to share their own memories, to honor their loved one’s life. Let the grieving person say what they need to say, feel what they need to feel.

[Executive director of the Suicide Prevention Network based in Minden, Nevada Debbie] Posnien suggested: “Listen with your heart, maybe hold their hand, look into their eyes, let them know you feel their pain.” Saying that you feel someone’s pain may seem similar to “I understand what you’re going through,” but those words more fully honor the complexity of the survivor’s experience — they mean “I understand you need support” and they mean “We’re going to walk through it together.”





Saturday, August 1, 2020

When a Spouse Won't Agree to Your EOL Plan

A woman wrote to Slate's Dear Prudence to say that her husband won't talk to her about end of life choices or support her wish to have a DNR and palliative care only if she gets COVID-19.


There may be more you can do to ensure your wishes are respected even if your husband never comes around. Having a DNR is a great start, but you may also want to draw up a living will, which can address treatments beyond just resuscitation, such as ventilation, tube feeding, dialysis, and antibiotics. You can also set up a trusted friend or relative with power of attorney. The Mayo Clinic has a rundown on the difference between a living will and a DNR directive, as well as what you might need to enforce and validate both.

It should be easier to insist that your husband have a practical conversation with you about end-of-life care if you’re not also worrying that your fate lies in his hands. You can tell him: “I know you don’t want to think about either of us dying. Death is going to happen whether we plan for it or not. I can’t force you to talk about it, but if we avoid the subject forever, it won’t make death any less real. It will just mean that I have to make plans alone, and I would rather go through this part of our lives the way we’ve gone through the last 40 years—as partners. I want you to know which directives I’ve established with my medical proxy, and I’ve made a copy for us to review together. I know you’re not up to acting as my advocate yourself, but I want you to know what you can expect. Can you give me an hour of your time to discuss this?” If you think it would help to have a mediator, you might schedule an appointment with your doctor to review your various directives and ask your husband to join you. That way he won’t have to participate in anything he finds too overwhelming, but you’ll have the peace of mind that he knows what’s going on. I hope you can find ways to get through to him: It’s easier to get through even the most painful scenarios if you have a companion, and he needs you as much as you need him.

Friday, July 10, 2020

COVID-19: The Tragic Loss of Coronavirus Patients’ Final Words


Zeynep Tufekci writes in The Atlantic:
 

Of all the wrongdoings of this pandemic, the one that haunts me most is how people are left to die alone. Health-care workers have been heroic throughout all this, but they do not replace the loved ones whom the dying need to be with, and speak with, even if only one last time.

A hallmark of COVID-19 has been the speed with which some patients have crashed, going from feeling only a little sick to being unable to breathe, sometimes in the space of a few hours. Such a crash often necessitates intubation, a process that then renders one incapable of speaking. Many people on ventilators are also heavily sedated and unconscious, to keep them from pulling out the invasive tubes going down their throat. Thus, sometimes with little warning, all communication is lost, and more often than not, a patient is without family or loved ones when this happens....

It’s also not just that the dying deserve to be heard or that their wisdom is valuable, but that the living need to have the chance to hear them—to let go on their own, mutual terms.

The Tragic Loss of Coronavirus Patients’ Final Words

 

 

Friday, July 3, 2020

COVID-19: Will We Finally Start to Talk About Advanced Directives?

Joel Rowe writes in The Atlantic:


I am a resident emergency physician in New York City, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to pick up the phone to inform the family of a patient with the coronavirus that their loved one was close to death. Recently, when an elderly woman arrived with what my colleagues and I identified as severe COVID-19, her prognosis was grave. I went to the ambulance bay, away from the cacophony of the emergency department, to call her relatives to tell them that even our most advanced interventions would not help her. The news was understandably difficult to absorb. The family reflexively asked us to “do everything,” rather than heeding the gentle recommendation that we focus on preserving her comfort.

We placed a tube in her throat to connect her to a ventilator, inserted catheters in her veins to administer medications that would sustain her heart, and performed chest compressions to temporarily supply blood to her vital organs. Our team tried for 45 minutes to resuscitate the patient as her lungs and heart gave out.

...

[M]y patients and their families are facing the sudden decline that can occur in people with COVID-19, and many are not prepared. Before the pandemic, my colleagues and I conducted end-of-life conversations or delivered bad news over the phone only in very rare circumstances. I would take a patient’s family to a quiet room, sit face-to-face with them, and offer a hand to hold. Now the comfort I can offer the family, in some cases living mere blocks away, is limited, since relatives are rarely allowed in the hospital during coronavirus surges. Such restrictions exist for everyone’s safety, but they can make end-of-life decisions that much more difficult. When family members see the physical condition of their loved one, that’s often when the gravity of an acute situation truly sinks in. Without witnessing this reality, disbelief is common. “You can’t be talking about my dad,” one family member said to me over the phone. “There’s no way you have the right person. Please tell me this is a mistake.” No one should be making decisions about end-of-life care under such stressful circumstances.
 
In the absence of an advance directive, physicians always “do everything” to save someone’s life; it is our ethical and legal mandate. But in the final days or hours of an illness, when the body is permanently failing, disrupting the dying process without an advance directive in place can feel especially troubling. CPR is not like it is in the movies. Effective chest compressions, for instance, regularly break ribs. Invasive measures are justified when a patient has decided that they want them—and many patients choose that route. But they aren’t what everyone might wish for as they lie dying. When I know a patient’s wishes, I can work with a family to achieve them, even over the phone. In the end, I want my patients to die with dignity, whatever that means to them.



The Pandemic Should Change the Way We Talk About Dying

Sunday, May 31, 2020

Processing Grief -- With Movies



This has been a time when things were hard and films have been there as a comfort blanket and psychological reset. I have watched many films during this lockdown that have offered this: Booksmart, What We Do in the Shadows, Game Night to name three. And it has led me to dwell on how cinema has helped me process grief.

It does not have to be a "great" movie and it does not have to be about grief. Here is what he has to say about the dumb action movie about a prehistoric fish, "The Meg."

The Meg is a dumb film. It’s surprisingly bloodless and clearly has had an edit or two to reshape it before it reached cinemas. But as I watched a giant shark decimate the waters of a packed beach I knew this had been the right choice. There is not an ounce of our reality in this Jason Statham vs. prehistoric shark flick and it helped me detach from the day and the news we had received. Cinema helped me when I needed to, as it would many times again.

Sometimes grief helps you to experience a film as the film helps you process grief.

"Parasite" is a much sadder watch when revisited. Maybe I was emotionally raw but you feel the pain and anguish that is at the film’s core, the rage that seems to course through it is more potent than ever.






Cinema and Grief

Saturday, May 30, 2020

From the Gravestone of Artist Gwen Frostic

Michigan artist Gwen Frostic: Here lies one doubly blessed -- she was happy and she knew it.

Jim Breuer Cares for his Father

Former SNL cast member Jim Breuer talks about taking care of his aging father.

[W]hen his car was finally taken away, he stopped shaving. He stopped bathing. He would sleep all day long. That literally was the beginning of killing my father. His giving up the car was throwing in the flag—it’s over. Now I have to be dependent on everyone else.

So I knew if I left him alone, nobody would sacrifice what I would do. [I had to] clean him, shower him, get him on the bus. Now he has to go to the bathroom. We pull over. Oh, shoot. He didn’t make it. Clean him again. But you know what? We laughed so hard. There were times where I cried. I knew if I didn’t do this, he had nothing to live for. [At shows], he talked to people. I saw how much life it gave him.

...


I learned sacrifice. I learned the importance of life, the importance of getting rid of our own pride and selfishness. The greatest thing that I had in my life was those moments with my dad that I sacrificed. I looked at him as a soldier. He’s a wounded soldier. It’s my duty as a human to take care of this soldier.

I learned more about my father in his last 5 to 6 years than I ever did my whole lifetime. One of the things I did, I would go, “Dad, I know you don’t know how to work YouTube, but wait until you see this concert. I found Hank Williams in 1940. And look at this.” Then that brings on memories and it brings happiness and it gives him a little extra breath in life. He’s not concentrating on “I want my car. I want to drive.” Now you’re just spending time. [I had] the greatest memories of a lifetime just watching this. It’s like watching a child grow—except for we were never taught that this is what we’re supposed to do for parents.

...

The minute I got rid of the attitude of “you need to do this” and “you need to do that.” I just realized the more I gave him love, the more I just spent time, the more I played his music, the more I took him out for a little drive and [asked him for advice], he felt important. It gave him meaning, it gave him purpose.






I Took My 84-Year-Old Dad on a Comedy Tour. It Changed Our Relationship Forever

Friday, May 29, 2020

Portraits of Grief With Unplanned Relevance

The New York Times writes about two television series that are particularly apt for this moment:

Two recent Netflix series, however, “Never Have I Ever” and “I’m Not Okay With This,” provide a different kind of comfort, particularly in these times: complex and dynamic representations of grief.

Though both shows are obviously oblivious to our current reality, of masks and Zoom calls and desperately baking bread, they serve as an apt metaphor for what we’re facing, with a pandemic causing widespread illness and death. The shows’ respective protagonists, already caught in the tangle of adolescence, itself a time of awkwardness and isolation, exhibit how grief can locate and lodge itself in the body and change how we physically move through the world.







Now on Netflix: Portraits of Grief With Unplanned Relevance

Sunday, May 17, 2020

A Chaplain on What To Say to People Who Are Dying

You’re never going to know what the right thing to say is. So silence is often your best friend. For two reasons. One, silence offers you the space to get to know what to say. It allows you to be present in a way where the moment washes over you so you can become inspired. Your gut tells you what to say. That’s the right thing to say or do. And No. 2, it offers a space for the other person to say what they want to say or do what they want to do, or to just cry or just be in the silence....My best advice to you is forget what you think you know, and just listen....You don’t have a final goodbye, which for a lot of people helps with closure. It’s going to take a lot to accept that, that that’s the way it is. It happened that way. It doesn’t mean that that person wasn’t deeply loved and didn’t know that they were deeply loved. It doesn’t mean that you can’t share your love for that person with other people who also loved that person.

The best we can do is to speak to other people who also knew that person and share memories. Talk about how they made you laugh, or they made you angry. Laugh about that because it doesn’t matter anymore.


How I Talk to People Before They Die

Friday, May 15, 2020

A Friar at COVID-19 Deathbeds: "The Miracle is to Let Go"

From The Washington Post, a story about a friar at the side of those dying of COVID-19:

Normally,” he said, “the family is there with me bedside at death, and when we say the Our Father it is very emotional. Now I stare at a person that is taking their last breaths. I’m with a doctor and a couple of nurses. We’re saying goodbye.”

...

Each morning, he reviews death logs. He then walks through the emergency department and intensive care unit, where he stands behind glass and cues up music on the smartphone he keeps in his pocket. “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is a favorite selection. On Funky Fridays, as he calls them, Bathe mixes Benedictine chants with James Brown. If patients are awake, he flexes his biceps or pumps a fist — encouragement to stay strong. He takes precautions when praying over the intubated, slipping on an N95 mask and face shield. In all, he ministers to more than 25 patients daily.
Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access.

“Music gives a little more sense of sacredness so I don’t get distracted by nurses and doctors screaming,” he said. “I am focused on that patient, looking at that face. I know who that person is, imagine what it is like for them to be alive.”

...

When a Catholic dies, he performs the commendation of the dead, a seven-minute service. His responsibilities range from distributing Communion to finding prayer books for patients across faiths to leading memorial services for staff. He is “staunchly against” virtual bereavement, which has become common amid the pandemic, insisting on providing a physical presence.
“People are looking for a miracle when the miracle is to let go,” he said.



At New York hospital, a friar watches over those dying: ‘The miracle is to let go’

Monday, May 4, 2020

Talking to Children About Death and Loss in the Age of COVID-19

Families everywhere are facing loss in ways they never have before. For some, these losses are hitting closer to home with the deaths of loved ones; but all families are experiencing some amount of loss - a normal semblance of day-to-day life, the cancellation of anticipated celebrations, vacations, camps and more. As parents seek advice and resources to navigate this newly uncharted territory, they're turning to trusted brands like PJ Library to help draw a roadmap of the "new normal" of quarantine - as well as a toolkit for having more difficult conversations with children about death and dying, mourning and remembrance.

On May 6th at 3:30pm ET, PJ Library will host a public webinar, "Talking with Children about Death and Loss in the Age of the Coronavirus." This streaming video discussion will be free to families everywhere, helping them tackle one of the hardest subjects to deal with as a parent, approached through the lens of Jewish teaching and values.


Register for the webinar

Saturday, April 25, 2020

The New Urgency of EOL Conversations Because of COVID-19

Many doctors have asked: is this the calm before the storm? As more people start to get acute respiratory distress syndrome from this virus – and they will – it will get more difficult to manage. Are we going to be trying to assess our older patients with comorbidities in a telephone consult to ascertain whether they should go to hospital? Should we be starting to talk to all our patients about what their plan is if they get the virus?

Absolutely, we should. Any patient being admitted to hospital may not survive and may not see their family again. Especially if they are elderly and/or with comorbidities.

Steve Carroll, a US emergency physician said last week: “Patients are arriving without family or friends. Now we make sure they call their family before we put them on a ventilator. Because they may never get to speak to them again.”

COVID-19: Time to get serious about end-of-life discussions

Monday, March 30, 2020

COVID-19: Who lives, who dies, who decides

I used to work on some of these issues in the government: should we ban a pesticide that will cause two cancers a year if banning it will raise the price of a bushel of strawberries 50 cents?

As this article discusses, we are terrible at making these trade-offs. When one child falls down a well, we spare no expense in rescuing her, clearly the right choice. But when it comes to deciding whether all wells should have walls around them to make sure no other child falls down, we are not very good at figuring out the right answer. If there is one.

How would have you responded if a year ago the President asked everyone to make a plan in case there was a pandemic? Would you vote for a candidate because he or she had an expensive contingency plan for a virus?

An isolation-induced recession would reduce economic activity by roughly 21 percent, compared with 9 percent under a more lax approach, according to a ballpark estimate by economists Martin Eichenbaum, Sergio Rebelo and Mathias Trabandt. It’s not unreasonable to assume that strict containment could cost $2 trillion. These same authors estimate that such measures would prevent more than half a million deaths and protect millions of other Americans from becoming infected. If their analysis is even roughly right, these are huge health benefits and huge economic costs. Which path has more value? The answer isn’t obvious.

American policymakers have rarely been forced to consider such trade-offs during a massive pandemic. But we have spent decades trying to understand other trade-offs that help put them into context: How much should Medicare pay for a new lung cancer treatment? Should we require a car to have a $700 air bag? Should a company have to spend millions of dollars to remove contaminated soil beneath a remote and abandoned industrial site?



Who lives, who dies, who decides

Canada debates offering physician-assisted death to patients who aren’t terminally ill

Ron Posno has early-stage dementia. He wants to make sure that if his capacity becomes so diminished, he can take advantage of Canada's assisted death law. But it does not provide for people with dementia.

Posno figured Canada, which in 2016 passed a federal law on what people here call medical assistance in dying, would be a place where he could set out his wishes to die on his own terms while he was still competent. As it turns out, “advance requests” like the one he tried to make are not allowed.

Now the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has introduced a bill that would overhaul the process.
Polls show widespread support in Canada for broadening access. But much like the law it is intended to replace, the bill has faced criticism — for being too restrictive or too expansive or too confusing.

For Posno, “it failed dementia patients again completely.

...

Canada’s law is more liberal than those of the U.S. jurisdictions where the practice is legal. In those jurisdictions, which include California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia, only mentally capable, terminally ill patients with a prognosis of six months or less who can self-ingest the drugs are eligible.

But implementing the law in Canada has not been without challenges.

Doctors puzzled over the definition of a “reasonably foreseeable” natural death. Ellen Wiebe, a physician based in Vancouver and one of the first in Canada to provide medical assistance in dying, remembers hashing out policies in email discussion groups.
Criticism exploded in 2018 over the case of Audrey Parker, a 57-year-old woman with terminal breast cancer that had spread to her brain. Fearful that the disease might rob her of the mental cognition to consent a second time, she scheduled her death earlier than she otherwise would have wished.

Doctors reported that patients were forgoing pain medication, even though it increased their suffering, so they could provide that second consent.




Canada debates offering physician-assisted death to patients who aren’t terminally ill

Monday, March 16, 2020

Lifestories: Someone Had to be Benny (1996) [1/5]



A young man chooses to stop treatment and has to go to court in HBO's "Someone Had to Be Benny" (1996).

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

The Widow's Lament in Springtime by William Carlos Williams

The Widow's Lament in Springtime
by William Carlos Williams

Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirty-five years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.

Monday, March 2, 2020

What to Say to a Dying Person

Jenny Harrington writes about words of comfort for someone who is dying:

You will not be alone.
You will not feel pain.
We will be okay.




Three Magical Phrases to Comfort a Dying Person

How Going To A Dead & Company Concert With A Stranger Helped Me Heal After Losing My Son

Decades after her son was killed in an accident, a mother attends a rock concert with someone who remembered him, and it helps her feel close to him again.


Over the past few decades, the feeling of Jason sitting next to me on the couch watching television, our hips or legs touching, or riding in the car and grinning beside me, had disappeared. It began slowly, but over time I started having trouble picturing Jason’s face: the exact color of his eyes, the curve of his chin. Even scarier, I couldn’t remember the specific times we spent together, or recall the content of our conversations. But at this moment, my arm grazing Matt’s, I can suddenly picture Jason standing next to me again and I can almost feel our elbows touching.

The sensation is electric.

Music is at the center of my memory of the last time I saw Jason. We were at his dad’s house in Delaware and had the place to ourselves. Jason was taking piano lessons and wanted to show me what he’d learned. I slid over on the piano bench next to him, close enough so our bodies were touching. He played Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” and each haunting note was perfect. When he finished, he turned towards me. “Mom, you’re crying,” he said as he wiped a tear from my face. “So are you, Sweetie,” I said doing the same for him. We reached for each other for a long, lovely embrace. It was our last one. That moment is etched in my soul. And now so is this one in this field.





How Going To A Dead & Company Concert With A Stranger Helped Me Heal After Losing My Son

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

There is beauty and joy at the end of life, too

What people don’t understand is the beauty and joy to be found at the end of life. When I tell people I work at a hospice, they often say “that must be so hard.” But my favourite thing is hearing people’s stories, their experiences, their successes, their failures – the things that life has taught them. I love helping them share these stories with their family members. It helps the family members keep their loved one alive in their memories after he or she dies.

...

Hospice workers encourage conversations about things that want to be said and heard. We create time for families to connect, laugh and cry together. Mostly, we help create a legacy of the resident that will remain with their family.




There is beauty and joy at the end of life, too

Sunday, February 9, 2020

A Play To Help Conversations and Understanding About Dementia

An actor sits in an armchair on a makeshift stage. People wander in, some elderly, many middle-aged and a few who look to be in their 20s. The actor, partly covered in a blanket, rocks slightly, staring at and wringing her hands. “Puh … puh …. puh,” she says. It’s Connie. This is no ordinary theatre. This is Newbury library at 7pm on a Wednesday. Some, oblivious to the waiting play, talk and exchange books. Most stay to watch the performance.

Emily, Connie’s daughter, appears when there’s a full audience of around 35 people. “Hi mum, it’s me,” she says. Kissing Connie on the head, she talks about her first TV cooking show and looks through a large book. “There’s a recipe of your rock cakes in here,” Emily says. “Here we are, Connie’s rock cakes … gosh 1987.” It’s Connie’s memory book. She has dementia.

The play, Connie’s Colander, follows Emily’s visit to her mother, a retired domestic science teacher who has Alzheimer’s. As they reminisce while Emily explains how she’s bringing her mother’s recipes to the show, we see how their relationship has evolved during Emily’s life and Connie’s illness.

When the play’s the thing to help us talk about Alzheimer’s

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Home Burial by Robert Frost

Home Burial
BY ROBERT FROST
He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him. She was starting down,
Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.
She took a doubtful step and then undid it
To raise herself and look again. He spoke
Advancing toward her: ‘What is it you see
From up there always—for I want to know.’
She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,
And her face changed from terrified to dull.
He said to gain time: ‘What is it you see,’
Mounting until she cowered under him.
‘I will find out now—you must tell me, dear.’
She, in her place, refused him any help
With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.
She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see,
Blind creature; and awhile he didn’t see.
But at last he murmured, ‘Oh,’ and again, ‘Oh.’

‘What is it—what?’ she said.

‘Just that I see.’

‘You don’t,’ she challenged. ‘Tell me what it is.’

‘The wonder is I didn’t see at once.
I never noticed it from here before.
I must be wonted to it—that’s the reason.
The little graveyard where my people are!
So small the window frames the whole of it.
Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?
There are three stones of slate and one of marble,
Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight
On the sidehill. We haven’t to mind those.
But I understand: it is not the stones,
But the child’s mound—’

‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,’ she cried.

She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm
That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs;
And turned on him with such a daunting look,
He said twice over before he knew himself:
‘Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?’

‘Not you! Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t need it!
I must get out of here. I must get air.
I don’t know rightly whether any man can.’

‘Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time.
Listen to me. I won’t come down the stairs.’
He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.
‘There’s something I should like to ask you, dear.’

‘You don’t know how to ask it.’

‘Help me, then.’

Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.

‘My words are nearly always an offense.
I don’t know how to speak of anything
So as to please you. But I might be taught
I should suppose. I can’t say I see how.
A man must partly give up being a man
With women-folk. We could have some arrangement
By which I’d bind myself to keep hands off
Anything special you’re a-mind to name.
Though I don’t like such things ’twixt those that love.
Two that don’t love can’t live together without them.
But two that do can’t live together with them.’
She moved the latch a little. ‘Don’t—don’t go.
Don’t carry it to someone else this time.
Tell me about it if it’s something human.
Let me into your grief. I’m not so much
Unlike other folks as your standing there
Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.
I do think, though, you overdo it a little.
What was it brought you up to think it the thing
To take your mother-loss of a first child
So inconsolably—in the face of love.
You’d think his memory might be satisfied—’

‘There you go sneering now!’

‘I’m not, I’m not!
You make me angry. I’ll come down to you.
God, what a woman! And it’s come to this,
A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.’

‘You can’t because you don't know how to speak.
If you had any feelings, you that dug
With your own hand—how could you?—his little grave;
I saw you from that very window there,
Making the gravel leap and leap in air,
Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly
And roll back down the mound beside the hole.
I thought, Who is that man? I didn’t know you.
And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs
To look again, and still your spade kept lifting.
Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice
Out in the kitchen, and I don’t know why,
But I went near to see with my own eyes.
You could sit there with the stains on your shoes
Of the fresh earth from your own baby’s grave
And talk about your everyday concerns.
You had stood the spade up against the wall
Outside there in the entry, for I saw it.’

‘I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed.
I’m cursed. God, if I don’t believe I’m cursed.’

‘I can repeat the very words you were saying:
“Three foggy mornings and one rainy day
Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.”
Think of it, talk like that at such a time!
What had how long it takes a birch to rot
To do with what was in the darkened parlor?
You couldn’t care! The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
Friends make pretense of following to the grave,
But before one is in it, their minds are turned
And making the best of their way back to life
And living people, and things they understand.
But the world’s evil. I won’t have grief so
If I can change it. Oh, I won’t, I won’t!’

‘There, you have said it all and you feel better.
You won’t go now. You’re crying. Close the door.
The heart’s gone out of it: why keep it up.
Amy! There’s someone coming down the road!’

‘You—oh, you think the talk is all. I must go—
Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you—’

‘If—you—do!’ She was opening the door wider.
‘Where do you mean to go? First tell me that.
I’ll follow and bring you back by force. I will!—’

Sunday, January 26, 2020

When You, That At This Moment Are To Me


When you, that at this moment are to me
by Edna St. Vincent Millay


When you, that at this moment are to me
Dearer than words on paper, shall depart,
And be no more the warder of my heart,
Whereof again myself shall hold the key;
And be no more—what now you seem to be—
The sun, from which all excellences start
In a round nimbus, nor a broken dart
Of moonlight, even, splintered on the sea;
I shall remember only of this hour—
And weep somewhat, as now you see me weep—
The pathos of your love, that, like a flower,
Fearful of death yet amorous of sleep,
Droops for a moment and beholds, dismayed,
The wind whereon its petals shall be laid.

Sunday, January 5, 2020

A Prison Hospice in California

“I listen to people’s regrets, their stories, their happiness, their joy. I listen to their confessions,” Murillo says.

“I befriend somebody when they’re perfectly healthy, walking around, I’ll take care of them when they’re unable to talk and eventually hold their hands when they’re taking their last breaths.”

He and his fellow inmate workers take that work seriously. When someone under their care has 72 hours left to live, they never leave his side. “No prisoner dies alone” is their motto.



Inside the prison hospice where no inmate dies alone

We’re Getting Old, but We’re Not Doing Anything About It

Susan Jacoby writes about the failure to address the impact of an aging population:

Like climate change, the aging of America demands serious reconsideration of the way we live. Confronting the issue and its many implications, from Medicare’s failure to cover long-term care to the ethics of physician-assisted dying, requires what seems to be the most difficult task for human beings — thinking about the future...

In certain respects, the crisis is already upon us. A study published this year by Gallup and West Health, a research organization dedicated to lowering health care costs, showed that people over 65 had withdrawn an estimated $22 billion from long-term savings accounts in the previous year to pay for health expenses Medicare didn’t cover. A recently published article in The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society underscores the sobering likelihood that one out of seven 65-year-olds today can expect to be disabled for at least five years before death. The largest increase in the disabled population is projected to occur in the 2030s.

Although there has been considerable talk about health care during the Democratic presidential debates, nearly all of the focus has been on the young with inadequate insurance coverage. That Medicare as we now know it fails to work for many retirees, leaving them in danger of going bankrupt, gets short shrift....

First, it is vital to address the disturbing human realities behind the statistics. An aging society affects everyone, but it affects women most because of their greater longevity. How can we continue to count on women to provide two-thirds of unpaid caregiving? I gnash my teeth every time I encounter one of those ubiquitous television ads for a business called “A Place for Mom,” which provides much-needed service by helping people find long-term care for parents. It’s not called “A Place for Dad” for a very good reason. We assume that Mom (or Daughter) is caring for Dad at home.

Second, public programs and private companies need to cooperate to provide opportunities for old people who want to and are perfectly able to go on working. That’s an important objective of AARP, which held town halls on aging in Iowa last summer. Most candidates attended at least one of the meetings, but the discussions received little national publicity.

Third, a healthier attitude toward aging also means examining moral issues. Physician-assisted suicide, for example, is the source of a fierce ethical debate that matters greatly to anyone who can imagine growing old. Questions about the end of life, like those about abortion, should be posed in every national forum. According to a Gallup poll conducted last year, 72 percent of Americans agree that doctors should be allowed to help end a patient’s life painlessly if there is no hope of a cure and the medical assistance is requested by patients and their families. The support drops to 65 percent if the phrase “doctor-assisted suicide” is used instead of “end a patient’s life” — yet another case of the American preference for euphemism.






We’re Getting Old, but We’re Not Doing Anything About It

Mary Pipher on the Joys of Being Older

The only constant in our lives is change. But if we are growing in wisdom and empathy, we can take the long view. We’ve lived through seven decades of our country’s history, from Truman to Trump. I knew my great-grandmother, and if I live long enough, will meet my great-grandchildren. I will have known seven generations of family. I see where I belong in a long line of Scotch-Irish ancestors. I am alive today only because thousands of generations of resilient homo sapiens managed to procreate and raise their children. I come from, we all come from, resilient stock, or we wouldn’t be here.

By the time we are 70, we have all had more tragedy and more bliss in our lives than we could have foreseen. If we are wise, we realize that we are but one drop in the great river we call life and that it has been a miracle and a privilege to be alive.

The Joy of Being a Woman in Her Seventies

Friday, January 3, 2020

Dying May Be Easier Than Talking To Your Family About Dying

The New York Times has been following a small group of vitally engaged people over 85 since 2015. Now, only one of them is left.

For the elders and their families in the Times series, the deaths were all different, the emotional preparations even more so. None were what anyone had hoped. As predictable as death in old age has become, families still have little guidance for the last stretch of life.

Fred Jones died just days after one of his daughters died, in April 2016; John Sorensen, who said on every visit that he wanted to die, died in June that year, missing his partner of 60 years. Jonas died with finished manuscripts around him; Ping Wong had a stroke and refused her daughter’s entreaties to eat; Helen Moses closed her eyes in early December and never opened them again, dying five days later, a talkative woman reduced to silence.

The one left is Ruth Willig, age 96.

Finally, she said, “I’m ready, I am. But I worry about my children. They’re so devoted to me. It scares me.”

It is one of the most vexing chapters of old age: how to navigate not just the inevitable ending, but the days and months immediately before it. As the bonds of support and dependency change, how do we tell our children that it is O.K. to say goodbye? And how do we tell our parents that it is O.K. to go?

...

The vocabulary of loss and grief, which can bloom into eloquence after someone’s death, is of no use in the weeks or months leading up to it. Instead, there is language suited to war: the battle against illness or refusal to quit, the heroic struggle whose linguistic alternative is failure or giving up.