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‘Würmchen is Dead’

Posted on September 18, 2014 - by Elizabeth Heineman

There’s an old pear tree in our back yard. It’s too close to the house. One of these days, a windstorm will blow one of the high branches onto the roof, and we’ll wish we’d had it removed earlier. Already, windstorms have taken down the three ancient apple trees that were on the property when I bought the house. The pear tree is very sick. The center is nearly hollow, and you can see the rot in the branches. It’s only a matter of time. But I hate the thought of chopping it down. It’s the last of the old […]

Jump-Start Your Resilience by Telling Your Grief Story

Posted on September 18, 2014 - by Harriet Hodgson

Resilience is a skill, perhaps an art, learned from life experience. When a loved one dies our resilience may disappear for a while. Much as we want to be resilient, we can’t seem to do it because we’re so mired in grief. At least, that is my experience. In 2007 four of my family members died within nine months. Though I’m a stable person, these successive losses brought me to my knees. Seven years have passed since my daughter, father-in-law, brother, and former son-in-law died. During this time I’ve told my story in articles, books, talks, and workshops. Today, with […]

The Terms of My Surrender

Posted on September 17, 2014 - by Maria Kubitz

From the moment you came into my life, I hated you. I despised you. You came on the heels of my worst nightmare come true – the death of my young daughter. I didn’t know your name at the time. I just knew that you brought with you all the horrible feelings and emotions I had spent a lifetime learning how to repress and ignore. You broke my defenses down like they were candles trying to stay lit in a hurricane. You pounded me with pain, panic, anger, confusion, hysterics, anguish…and too many more to list. Mostly you came in […]

Thoughts on 9/11: Holding onto Hope

Posted on September 12, 2014 - by Anne Hamilton

I feel so much loss. It’s September 12th, 2014, thirteen years after the terror attacks that I witnessed while living in New York City. I kept a media blackout in my home and my heart yesterday. I don’t want any more images of those burning buildings to flash before my eyes. I don’t want to remember. At the same time, it was a a day where everything in my life changed and deserves reflection. It turns out that my life has changed for the better. First, I survived what I could never have imagined – watching 3,000 people die before […]

9/11 Post-Traumatic Stress: Four Things That Can Help

Posted on September 11, 2014 - by Gloria Horsley

Where were you on September 11th, 2001? I was just getting ready to fly to Utah to speak at a hospice conference. I set out my breakfast and turned on the television news, as I did every morning, just as the first plane hit the World Trade Center. Like everyone, I was confused and in shock. Of course, plans were cancelled as we spent days at home glued to the television set. Like so many others, that event would change my life in unexpected ways. At the time, I was living in San Francisco only miles from our daughter, Heidi, […]

When it’s Grief, Not Depression

Posted on September 9, 2014 - by Susan Casey

One sleepless night, I tiptoed down the stairs, slipped outside and stared up at the low-hanging moon, so close to me it looked as if it had been pinned against the black canvas with a thumb tack. I reached out a hand to snatch if from the sky, tuck it inside my heart, feel its warm steady glow burn through my body, filling the empty places my brother’s death left behind. Perhaps I’d be able float, or fly into the midnight sky, join him there in the crook of a star, swing our legs and whisper all that he gave […]

Easing The Way At the End of Life: A Conversation with a Palliative Care Doctor

Posted on September 8, 2014 - by Elaine Mansfield

Elaine Mansfield: My husband Vic was strong and fit when he was diagnosed with incurable lymphoma. He went through chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant with relative ease and regained his vitality. Eight months after the stem cell transplant, we went to the ER because of swelling and arrhythmia. I refused to leave the room and witnessed as he was put on life support—a rough process. He survived twelve cardiac arrests of mysterious cause that night. He suffered in following months, but still taught a last class and completed a third book. Was this the time to call hospice even though […]

Joan Rivers’ Last Days Reminds Us Importance of Living Wills

Posted on September 8, 2014 - by Lisa Khuraibet

This week, the world lost another comedic icon – Joan Rivers. I must confess, I was sad at the passing of this woman. I grew up watching her on television. It was announced that she was on life support. To imagine a woman this vital on a ventilator is almost unthinkable. And yet, every day, many are on life support. So it brings to mind the question, “Do you have a living will?” In this day and age, it is routine for this question to be asked upon a hospital admission. However in 1990, it wasn’t. My grandmother, who was […]

Wildest Dreams: How We Can Learn to Grieve

Posted on September 8, 2014 - by Cheryl Espinosa-Jones

On the day my wife died, the house was overflowing. In the room with me were our kids, 2 1/2 and 14, and a few friends who had pretty much moved in with us those weeks when we knew it was the end. Out in the living room were people who had supported us through her illness, really supported us! They fed us, took care of our baby and helped our teenager navigate having a parent with life-limiting cancer. They had been there when we cried, and laughed, and napped; even for our difficult conversations. We all learned together to […]

Joan Rivers Wants Us to Laugh

Posted on September 8, 2014 - by Allen Klein

When I was doing research for my book, The Courage to Laugh: Humor, Hope and Healing in the Face of Death and Dying, I asked a number of people how they wanted to be remembered after they were gone. Most said that they wanted people to remember the happier times they shared with their friends and loved ones. Many also said that they wanted a funeral where people celebrated their life and who they were. Joan Rivers, the comedian who died recently, was one of those people who not only wanted people to continue laughing after she was gone but […]