SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS Official Trailer (2018) Elizabeth Olsen Movie HD

Does the Soul Return to the Universe?

One of my favorite ideas about the afterlife is the transcendental oversoul, Emerson's idea that life is a brief interruption of being separate until we return to the consciousness that envelops and connects us all.

Wonderneed has an article exploring this idea from the perspective of science.  "Orchestrated objective reduction" is the theory that the quantum elements that make up our consciousness continue even after death.

Palliative Care is Medical Care, Too

When Senator McCain's family announced that he was no longer going to treat his cancer, some reporters said he was stopping medical care. But others understood that palliative care is medical care, too.  Isaac Chan wrote in the Washington Post about the difficult but vitally important conversations with dying patients.

Many physicians encourage early palliative care for terminally ill patients, to make the process of dying less painful, more cost-effective and patient-focused. But if the patients are not ready, instead of feeling relief, they may experience this advice as abandonment. Without first considering how patients understand their own condition, doctors risk returning to a culture of paternalistic medicine, one where physicians make decisions for the patient in the belief that they know best. Disagreements about treatments between doctors and their patients near the end of life can be devastating. So communication is vital.

HELPING A FRIEND THROUGH GRIEF

How do you help a grieving friend?

Dealing with Death: Hospice Workers on Easing the Passing at End of Life

Providing the possibility of that wished-for death is the professional mission of all in this room, of all the 935 employees and 3,000 volunteers who work for the 40-year-old nonprofit Hospice of the Western Reserve. Each day they serve 1,200 hospice patients, most of them in hospitals, nursing homes, or their homes, and as many as 88 in one of three inpatient hospice houses in the Cleveland area, like this one off Lakeshore Boulevard.

By Medicare’s criteria, to receive hospice services, each of those patients is deemed to have six months or less to live. In most cases, they also must agree to forgo curative treatments....“It’s sacred work,” says Lisa Scotese Gallagher, one of whose jobs at Western Reserve is to provide programming to help the staff deal with the stress and emotional intensity of their jobs. “But the expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss and not be touched by it is unrealistic.”

...“Most of death isn’t medical, it’s spiritual and psychological,” he says. Hospice workers know they can’t erase all hurts and resentments. But often they facilitate conversations that can lead to deathbed reconciliations.

Crazy Good Turns: Thoughts on Grief

I love the Crazy Good Turns podcast, a "celebration of good," with stories about the good people do for others. This episode is about Camp Hope, a place for grieving children. Camp Hope counselors, like the campers, all dealt with loss at an early age.