Busy Bodies
I hang up the phone after being told that she left this world peacefully about an hour ago. Meanwhile, in my hands, are the gifts I meant to bring her, the cards I meant to send her. She called a few...
View ArticleBe Nice To Yourself
I get asked on countless occasions how I have been able to grieve my mother in what seems to be a “successful” and “effective” way. My assumption of “successful” and “effective” is attributed to the...
View ArticleUsing Loss to Fuel Your Transformation with Karen Wyatt MD
https://lessonsfromdying.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/bouncingbackinterview.mp3
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Endarterectomy - This One's Straight Off Personal
Most of us stagger through life a little off-balance believing that it will almost always happen to the other guy. I have been blessed with a Ken and Barbie existence for over six and half decades. I...
View ArticleThe Three Kings [aka Stooges]
Wednesday evening three old friends from Texas, Arizona, and northern Illinois descended on the Shoemaker home in Urbana, IL to sing their own semi-humorous re-write of the traditional Epiphany hymn...
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From Here To Eternity
Kourtney Teat, of Teat Chapel, Funeral Home & Cremation Service. No longer a 10-year old child who pursued his dreams. A Hurst pulled up and unload a casket, entering through the unlock doors of...
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The Dignity and the Mystery
My nearly-fifteen-year-old dog is ready to die. Not only a dog is Mr. Jinks, but a friend who’s unconditionally, unfailingly loved me for nearly fifteen years. He can never be “just a dog,”now, can he?...
View ArticleSmoke Gets In Your Eyes & Other Lessons From the Crematory by Caitlin...
In 1961, a paper in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology laid out the seven reasons humans
View ArticleA short history of assisted suicide
As government scrambles to legislate around last year’s Supreme Court of Canada judgment decriminalizing physician-assisted death, reaching political consensus will be tough. The right-to-die debate...
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Releasing Artemis by Carol P. Christ
As I was writing this story, my Word program froze several times, and I lost what I had written. This has never happened before. The fifth time, it occurred to me that Artemis was not happy with the...
View ArticleSaskatchewan must do a better job with palliative care
One certain fact on this planet is that at some time every one of us will die. A few of us will die suddenly, but the majority, about 85 per cent, will die of old age, frailty or at the end of a...
View ArticleRuminations and Reflections: How does your light shine?
By Don Laird, MS, NCC, LPC “There’s a starman waiting in the sky He’d like to come and m
View ArticleTop court hears arguments on suspending assisted-dying decision
The Supreme Court is deliberating on whether irremediably ill Canadians with intolerable suffering should, once again, be denied their constitutional right to a doctor-assisted death while Parliament...
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How to Die Like Bowie, or, We Can Be Heroes
A picture from David Bowie’s final photoshoot, shot by Jimmy King. By now, everyone has heard the news of David Bowie’s death of cancer at sixty-nine years of age. Bowie’s death came two days after...
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PUSHING PAST DISCOMFORT
I still love them. In truth, I still covet them. Gyroscopes, the best spinning tops ever. Quick flick of the wrist and you could make it perch on tiny pinpoint or even balance on a piece of string....
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Iconic British Rock Star David Bowie Creates a Good Death, a Hero's Death
Iconic British rock star (singer, writer/poet, actor, dancer, and musician) David Bowie passed away at the tender age of 69 this week, two days after his birthday and the release of a new album. Who...
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When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi*****
This beautifully written memoir is for sale today, and definitely worthy of a re-blog! Seattle Book Mama Paul Kalanithi was a promising young physician who had nearly finished completing ten years of...
View ArticleOne Way Ticket
The nurse said it would be better to come as soon as possible, rather than wait until the weekend. So some work has been cancelled, a seat booked for the coach, and only then did I wonder who would be...
View ArticleThe Anatomy of a Sunset
Death. It comes for us all. No one is exempt. Expected or Not. It’s there in the Sunset of our Lives. I first became intrigued by death and dying when I was ten years old. I recall sitting on a cement...
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