The Last Few Minutes of Life -- Comforting Visions, Final Surge

https://youtube.com/shorts/8p9ntin5s8Q?si=7IafGqkPaYhTwZtp

The Son Who Tried to Get His Father a Front Page Obituatry in the NY Times

Griffin Dunne writes in New York Magazine about his father's love for the obituaries in the New York Times, which he considered the ultimate imprimateur of a life of meaning and significance. Dunne's father was writer Dominick Dunne, and his best-selling memoir, The Friday Afternoon Club, tells the story of his family, including his aunt Joan Didion and uncle John Gregory Dunne. When his father was dying at the same time as a world-famous politician, Griffin tried to keep his father's death from the paper until the next day. It did not work out the way he hoped, and this is that story.

Visions or Delusions or the Brain Shutting Down: Deathbead Encounters

My great-grandmother-in-law's last words were, "Mama! Mama!" Did she see a vision of her mother, gone for more than sixty years, welcoming her to heaven? Or was she imagining herself a small child, calling out for her mother for comfort? The Washington Post has an article by Caitlin Gibson called The profound meaning and mystery of deathbed visions, about end-of-life dreams and visions, or ELDVs. William Kerr, the doctor studying this phenomena after years of medical professionals dismissing them as delusions, said they describe people and places they saw in dreams and visions, which might occur in different states of consciousness — wide awake, half awake or completely asleep — but conveyed the same striking intensity, an undeniable sense of realness. They were nothing like “normal” dreams, these patients insisted; their experiences felt wholly immersive, coherent and meaningful. Kerr noted that these descriptions stood in sharp contrast to the more discordant, often distressing experiences of delirium or medication-induced hallucinations, which also commonly occur in dying patients....The vast majority of ELDVs are comforting, but some can be unsettling or disturbing. Some patients find themselves revisiting pivotal episodes of their lives, while others experience more mundane, familiar moments. Travel is a frequently recurring theme: Many people describe packing suitcases, preparing for a trip or seeing loved ones in train or bus stations. ELDVs might occur very soon before a death — within hours or days — but can sometimes take place weeks or even a few months beforehand, often corresponding to a patient’s fluctuating health and typically increasing in frequency as death grows nearer.... [His] study, published in 2014 in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, found that end-of-life dreams and visions were strikingly common: 88 percent of patients reported experiencing at least one.

By September, Nearly a Third of Americans Will Live in States With Legal Aid in Dying

From the New York Times: A Pew Research Center survey last spring found that almost two-thirds of respondents didn’t consider the practice “morally wrong,” either because they thought it was acceptable or not a moral issue. Support crossed many political and religious lines: A narrow majority of Republicans and 76 percent of Democrats both found “physician assisted death” (also sometimes called “physician assisted suicide”) permissible; so did most Catholics, Jews and nonevangelical white Protestants. In New York, a Siena Poll found that 54 percent of respondents supported aid in dying, including majorities of men and women, of all age groups, and of city, suburban and upstate residents. A plurality of Latinos supported it; Black respondents narrowly opposed it. Passing these laws has grown somewhat easier, said Thaddeus Pope, a bioethicist and professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minn., who tracks such policies. “You can say, ‘We have 10 years in California, 18 years in Washington and 29 years in Oregon, and nothing bad has happened.’ It becomes more accepted.” Yet legalizing medical aid in dying, or MAID, has been and remains a long, contentious process. Catholic leadership and many disability organizations staunchly oppose it. (Pope Leo XIV personally asked Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker not to sign the bill.)

The Chaplain & the Doctor: A Team to Support End of Life

This stirring documentary is a tribute to all who care for those at the end of life. And to the importance of treating the person, not just the disease.

Making Space for Grief

Alexandra Hunt writes:

We have an expectation that sadness should soften quickly and privately. But grief doesn’t operate like that. It’s inconvenient. It’s repetitive. It’s sharp and can cut deep. It shows up long after everyone expects you to be fine. I think we all know that at some level, which is why we avoid it. Not just other people’s grief, but our own....Grief can be what life promised and didn’t deliver. The way we’re taught to carry grief teaches us to shrink. To be careful. To not burden people. To refuse to admit we need to be held. To say things like we’re fine on our own. So when I tried to build something around grief—a space where it could exist openly and where the ask to receive care was upfront—it fell apart in a predictable way. Not because it wasn’t needed. But because we don’t know how to hold it. Because we don’t know how to hold each other. Grief isn’t an interruption to life. Grief is life. It’s what happens when something mattered. When someone mattered. When a version of your life existed and then didn’t. You don’t get to opt out of that. The only choice is whether you have somewhere to put it. And right now, most of us don’t. So it leaks out in other ways. In distance. In disconnection. In relationships that can’t quite hold. In reactivity. In anger. Not because we’re broken. But because we’re carrying something with nowhere to go.

What to Know About Dying

The Washington Post's Ashley Abramson on what death doulas want us to know about dying, including: it can be peaceful, it does not need to be painful, there is sometimes a surge of clarity and energy before death, and hearing is often the last sense to go. Most important, though is this:

Thinking about death while you’re alive can make it less scary Many cultures see death as a positive experience or transition, not something to be feared. While your own end of life can be hard to think and talk about, death doulas encourage doing both. One of the best ways to experience a peaceful death — and a fulfilling life — is to contemplate your own mortality regularly. “The more we allow ourselves to talk about death in every way, the logistical realities and emotional connotation, the less scary it is,” said [Erika] Reid Gerdes.