Monday, January 4, 2016
Signs the Dying Process Has Begun
"Death is a personal journey that each individual approaches in their own unique way. Nothing is concrete, nothing is set in stone. There are many paths one can take on this journey but all lead to the same destination.
As one comes close to death, a process begins; a journey from the known life of this world to the unknown of what lies ahead.
As that process begins, a person starts on a mental path of discovery, comprehending that death will indeed occur and believing in their own mortality. The journey ultimately leads to the physical departure from the body.
There are milestones along this journey. Because everyone experiences death in their own unique way, not everyone will stop at each milestone.
Some may hit only a few while another may stop at each one, taking their time along the way. Some may take months to reach their destination, others will take only days. We will discuss what has been found through research to be the journey most take, always keeping in mind that the journey is subject to the individual traveler."
Signs the Dying Process Has Begun
As one comes close to death, a process begins; a journey from the known life of this world to the unknown of what lies ahead.
As that process begins, a person starts on a mental path of discovery, comprehending that death will indeed occur and believing in their own mortality. The journey ultimately leads to the physical departure from the body.
There are milestones along this journey. Because everyone experiences death in their own unique way, not everyone will stop at each milestone.
Some may hit only a few while another may stop at each one, taking their time along the way. Some may take months to reach their destination, others will take only days. We will discuss what has been found through research to be the journey most take, always keeping in mind that the journey is subject to the individual traveler."
Signs the Dying Process Has Begun
Natural Burial (letter to the editors, New Yorker)
A part of the death industry that was skirted in Rebecca Mead’s article about the artisanal funeral director Caitlin Doughty is the cemetery (“Our Bodies, Ourselves,” November 30th). At a cemetery, there are concrete vaults, coffins made from exotic materials, and headstones that have been transported from across the country; perpetual mowing, irrigation, and leaking toxins become one’s environmental legacy. Contrast that with a natural burial: the unembalmed body is wrapped in a simple shroud and laid to rest in a three-to-four-foot-deep hand-dug hole, marked only with materials found on site and a small metal surveyor’s disk, and decorated with native wildflowers. When a natural burial site is overseen by a nonprofit land trust or a public-park system where the proceeds purchase more conservation land and restore the landscape to a meadow or a forest, the environmental legacy of the departed extends to land that is protected as sacred burial ground, which even the most cynical developer or government will not dare disturb. So rather than become a puff of crematory air pollution, each of us can partially compensate for our living environmental footprint by occupying and securing special ground, one death at a time.
Robert Hutchinson, gravedigger
Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery
Alachua County, Fla.
The Mail (January 4, 2016) - The New Yorker
Sunday, January 3, 2016
Saturday, January 2, 2016
How Social Media Changes the Way We Mourn -- And the Way We Understand Death
Jenna Wortham writes in the New York Times Magazine:
"In an essay they contributed to the ‘‘Handbook of Death and Dying,’’ the sociologists William R. Wood and John B. Williamson observe that people in the developed world have managed to banish death from their everyday lives — no small feat. ‘‘In the United States and Western Europe, dying is now primarily a private and often technical affair, hidden behind the closed doors of the hospital, the mortuary and the funeral home,’’ they write. Traditional mourning rituals, across the world, establish boundaries around grieving, to help the bereaved process the passing of a life. In the Philippines, for example, many families hold vigils over several days that allow mourners to be with the bodies of the deceased. Jewish tradition has shiva, a period of up to seven days in which families stay at home, receiving visitors. Even in households with no such traditions, obituaries for loved ones tend to include instructions for sending condolences and flowers for those who want to pay their respects from afar. But those norms evaporate on social media. There, mourning feels increasingly public, more communal and more collective.
The near pervasiveness of social technology has delivered death back into our daily interactions. With the exception of our friends and closest kin, we typically encounter news of deaths through social media. The same feed that informs us about sports scores and plot twists on ‘‘Empire’’ also tells us, without any ceremony, that a life has come to an end.
This could be a blurring of a sacred line, the conflation of the profound with something profane. But this flattening has a benefit: We can no longer avert our eyes from tragedy. We have seen how people used social media to ensure that Americans did not ignore the deaths of people like Freddie Gray, Walter Scott and Sandra Bland, amplifying them into a rallying cry for justice. The mass shootings in Paris and San Bernardino felt, somehow, closer to our lives because they played out on our screens and in our browsers."
Ghosts in the Machine - The New York Times
"In an essay they contributed to the ‘‘Handbook of Death and Dying,’’ the sociologists William R. Wood and John B. Williamson observe that people in the developed world have managed to banish death from their everyday lives — no small feat. ‘‘In the United States and Western Europe, dying is now primarily a private and often technical affair, hidden behind the closed doors of the hospital, the mortuary and the funeral home,’’ they write. Traditional mourning rituals, across the world, establish boundaries around grieving, to help the bereaved process the passing of a life. In the Philippines, for example, many families hold vigils over several days that allow mourners to be with the bodies of the deceased. Jewish tradition has shiva, a period of up to seven days in which families stay at home, receiving visitors. Even in households with no such traditions, obituaries for loved ones tend to include instructions for sending condolences and flowers for those who want to pay their respects from afar. But those norms evaporate on social media. There, mourning feels increasingly public, more communal and more collective.
The near pervasiveness of social technology has delivered death back into our daily interactions. With the exception of our friends and closest kin, we typically encounter news of deaths through social media. The same feed that informs us about sports scores and plot twists on ‘‘Empire’’ also tells us, without any ceremony, that a life has come to an end.
This could be a blurring of a sacred line, the conflation of the profound with something profane. But this flattening has a benefit: We can no longer avert our eyes from tragedy. We have seen how people used social media to ensure that Americans did not ignore the deaths of people like Freddie Gray, Walter Scott and Sandra Bland, amplifying them into a rallying cry for justice. The mass shootings in Paris and San Bernardino felt, somehow, closer to our lives because they played out on our screens and in our browsers."
Ghosts in the Machine - The New York Times
The Lives They Lived - Lisa Bonchek Adams
Elizabeth Weil remembers Lisa Bonchek Adams, who had the courage and honesty to understand that her greatest gift was to tell the truth about what it feels like to die.
"Part diarist, part Dear Abby, she chronicled her experience with cancer — dispensing insight and advice, avoiding euphemism and sentimentality. The value of a friend who texts: ‘‘Running to Costco. Need anything?’’ The strangeness of waiting in a gas-station line with chemo pills in your purse. The importance of sending your children and spouse on vacation so they realize they can survive without you."
The Lives They Lived - The New York Times:
"Part diarist, part Dear Abby, she chronicled her experience with cancer — dispensing insight and advice, avoiding euphemism and sentimentality. The value of a friend who texts: ‘‘Running to Costco. Need anything?’’ The strangeness of waiting in a gas-station line with chemo pills in your purse. The importance of sending your children and spouse on vacation so they realize they can survive without you."
The Lives They Lived - The New York Times:
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