"Everybody Thinks that You Are Dead, But I"

A Quoi Bon Dire?” by Charlotte Mew Seventeen years ago you said Something that sounded like Good-bye; And everybody thinks that you are dead, But I. So I, as I grow stiff and cold To this and that say Good-bye too; And everybody sees that I am old But you. And one fine morning in a sunny lane Some boy and girl will meet and kiss and swear That nobody can love their way again While over there You will have smiled, I shall have tossed your hair.

Don't Spread Your Loved One's Ashes in a Public Place

From Rick Reilly in the Washington Post I know, I know. He was the greatest person to ever live and “deserves” to have an eternal “view” from Yosemite or from the banks of Golden Pond or from the top of the Santa Monica Pier Ferris wheel. Except 3.2 million people die every year in America, and, according to the National Funeral Directors Association, 62 percent ask to be cremated. That’s more than double the rate 20 years ago. And nearly half say they “would prefer to have their remains scattered in a sentimental place.” Which would mean nearly a million incinerated Americans annually coating the sequoias at Yosemite and choking the loons on Golden Pond and sprinkling the churros of Santa Monica. It’s just bad taste. It can also be dangerous.

Witnessing Death

From CNN: "Stories about shared-death experiences have been circulating since the late 19th century, say those who study the phenomenon. The twist in shared-death stories is that it’s not just the people at the edge of death that get a glimpse of the afterlife. Those near them, either physically or emotionally, also experience the sensations of dying."

Emily Levine Embraces Death

Emily Levine had stage 4 cancer when she gave this TED talk. Life is an enormous gift, Levine says: "You enrich it as best you can, and then you give it back."

Sculpture Showing Grief

Melancholy, by Albert Gyorgy

Oliver Sacks Says Goodbye

Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and author, learned that he had terminal cancer. With his characteristic combination of objectivity and humanity, he wrote in the New York Times about his feelings on the last months of his life. I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

Study: Cancer and ALS Patients are the Most Frequent Users of Assisted Dying

A new study shows surprising consistency across the jurisdictions that allow medically assisted death. Overall, most people who accessed voluntary assisted dying had cancer (66.5% of cases). Neurological diseases were the second most common (8.1%), followed by heart (6.8%) and lung (4.9%) conditions. We also looked at what proportion of people with each disease accessed voluntary assisted dying versus dying by other means. Even though voluntary assisted dying rates and eligibility criteria vary by location, the rates for specific diseases were surprisingly consistent across regions and time periods. For example, people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – a rare, progressive, fatal disease that damages the brain and spinal cord – had the highest rate of voluntary assisted dying. People with ALS accessed voluntary assisted dying at a rate nearly seven times higher than people with cancer. Meanwhile, cancer patients were four times more likely to access voluntary assisted dying than those with lung disease, and ten times more likely than those with heart disease. What does this tell us? Cancer and ALS, which appear to be the main reasons people access voluntary assisted dying, have very little in common. But both often cause a more rapid decline in health and a greater perceived loss of dignity than other conditions.