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Death and Dying
Whether you like to plan ahead or not, think about your own mortality or not, there are some decisions that are best made in advance. There will be things we cannot predict or control about the end of our lives but there are some things we can be informed about and decide beforehand. These resources are designed to help you think about, talk about, and make decisions about how you want your financial and medical affairs to be set up. And to let your loved ones know what's important to you so they can honor your wishes.
In addition to the legal and practical considerations, several of these resources cover psychological and spiritual aspects of the death and dying process. Others examine the ethics and boundaries concerning death and dying.
The subject is taboo and because our culture is more removed from dealing with death in person, we oftentimes don't know what it involves. We're not sure and we often don't want to think about what people go through or what our rights are. These resources contain examples of the choices that are available as well as examples of what can happen when these choices are not made in advance.
Global Resources
| Title | Type | Description | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Wonderful Life by Cyrus Copeland |  |
The Philadelphia Inquirer: "Copeland has compiled 64 memorials to larger-than-life individuals, written by eulogizers who are, in most cases, equally unforgettable. Sad, intimate and even funny, these tributes...are compelling, whether you're a fan of history or just supermarket tabloids." The Boston Globe: "You might not think of eulogies as the same thing as love stories, but here...they most certainly are. This is an extraordinary collection of 64 goodbyes to the famous from the (mostly) famous". | |
| Erasing Death - NPR Interview with Sam Parnia, MD | |
What happens when we die? Wouldn't we all like to know. We can't bring people back from the dead to tell us — but in some cases, we almost can. Resuscitation medicine is now sometimes capable of reviving people after their heart has stopped beating and their brain has flat-lined; Dr. Sam Parnia, a critical care doctor and director of resuscitation research at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine, studies what these people experience in that period after their heart stops and before they're resuscitated. This includes visions such as bright lights and out-of-body experiences. Click here to visit the resource page. | |
| Final Gifts by M Callanan & P Kelley | |
For more than a decade the authors, hospice nurses, have tended the terminally ill. Now, in this moving and compassionate book, they share their intimate experiences with patients at the edge of life. Through these stories, you'll come to appreciate the near-miraculous ways in which the dying communicate their needs, reveal their feelings, and even choreograph their own final moments; you'll gain new insight into the leave-taking process; and in the end you'll discover the gifts of wisdom, faith, and love that the dying leave for us to share. | |
| Getting the Last Laugh on Grim Reaper - article by Leonard Pitts | |
This article explores how humor can assist us in being human during the process of a loved one's death. Click here to visit the resource page. | |
| Graceful Exits by Sushila Blackman | |
Death is a subject obscured by fear and denial. When we do think of dying, we are more often concerned with how to avoid the pain and suffering that may accompany our death than we are with really confronting the meaning of death and how to approach it. The author places death—and life—in a truer perspective, by telling us of others who have left this world with dignity. Graceful Exits offers valuable guidance in the form of 108 stories recounting the ways in which Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist, and Zen masters, both ancient and modern, have confronted their own deaths. By directly presenting the grace, clarity, and even humor with which great spiritual teachers have met the end of their days, Blackman provides inspiration and nourishment to anyone truly concerned with the fundamental issues of life and death. | |
| Heartwork – How to Get What You Really Really Want by Dale Goldstein | |
This is a book plus CD and is a synthesis of western psychological processes and eastern meditative techniques that allows people to work through even their most difficult psychological issues. These simple and direct methods are excellent for those how have found the standard psychological approach to personal growth too limited. The result is a journey of personal transformation that delivers not only a profoundly fresh perspective on life's challenges but also the ability to access spiritual dimensions of awareness. | |
| Knocking on Heaven's Door by Katy Butler | |
In this visionary memoir, based on a groundbreaking New York Times Magazine story, award-winning journalist Katy Butler ponders her parents’ desires for “Good Deaths” and the forces within medicine that stood in the way. Katy Butler was living thousands of miles from her vigorous and self-reliant parents when the call came: a crippling stroke had left her proud seventy-nine-year-old father unable to fasten a belt or complete a sentence. Tragedy at first drew the family closer: her mother devoted herself to caregiving, and Butler joined the twenty-four million Americans helping shepherd parents through their final declines. Then doctors outfitted her father with a pacemaker, keeping his heart going but doing nothing to prevent his six-year slide into dementia, near-blindness, and misery. When he told his exhausted wife, “I’m living too long,” mother and daughter were forced to confront a series of wrenching moral questions. When does death stop being a curse and become a blessing? Where is the line between saving a life and prolonging a dying? When do you say to a doctor, “Let my loved one go?” When doctors refused to disable the pacemaker, condemning her father to a prolonged and agonizing death, Butler set out to understand why. Her quest had barely begun when her mother took another path. Faced with her own grave illness, she rebelled against her doctors, refused open-heart surgery, and met death head-on. With a reporter’s skill and a daughter’s love, Butler explores what happens when our terror of death collides with the technological imperatives of medicine. Her provocative thesis is that modern medicine, in its pursuit of maximum longevity, often creates more suffering than it prevents. This revolutionary blend of memoir and investigative reporting lays bare the tangled web of technology, medicine, and commerce that dying has become. And it chronicles the rise of Slow Medicine, a new movement trying to reclaim the “Good Deaths” our ancestors prized. Knocking on Heaven’s Door is a map through the labyrinth of a broken medical system. It will inspire the difficult conversations we need to have with loved ones as it illuminates the path to a better way of death. | |
| Living Into Dying by Nancy Poer | |
"Here is a family who celebrated their elders, nursed them at home to die, built their caskets, honored and cared for them after death and then went out into the community to help others who want to do the same." "Every aspect of caring for the dying is in this book, from building a casket to connecting with those who have died." | |
| Living Our Dying - by Joseph Sharp | |
When he wrote Living Our Dying, Joseph Sharp had been living with the HIV virus for over a decade, living each day with the knowledge that he will, eventually, die. For him, this has become the foundation of an intimate awareness of the beauty and majesty of life, in himself and in all those close to him, whether they've been diagnosed with a fatal illness or not. In this straightforward book, Sharp weaves his personal experiences, quotations from other spiritual and health authors, and suggested meditations into a moving proposal for the "rewriting" of our own lives as a conscious pilgrimage toward the inevitable outcome for ourselves and those we love. Click here to visit the resource page. | |
| Natural Transitions Magazine | |
NATURAL TRANSITIONS MAGAZINE is the ONLY magazine on CONSCIOUS, HOLISTIC APPROACHES TO END OF LIFE that’s also a forum for professional end-of-life caregivers and families with loved-ones facing end-of-life transition. We are a vehicle for the alternative death care Movement. Click here to visit the resource page. | |
| Necessary Losses - by Judith Viorst | |
In this book, Judith Viorst turns her considerable talents to a serious and far-reaching subject: how we grow and change through the losses that are an inevitable and necessary part of life. She argues persuasively that through the loss of our mothers' protection, the loss of the impossible expectations we bring to relationships, the loss of our younger selves, and the loss of our loved ones through separation and death, we gain deeper perspective, true maturity, and fuller wisdom about life. She has written a book that is both life affirming and life changing. | |
| The Final Crossing by Scott Eberle | |
Joan Halifax: "This is an extraordinarily wise and compassionate book written by a physician of the body and the heart. In this beautifully written account of the death of his beloved teacher and friend, we can discover the great mystery of meeting death as a teacher and friend..." | |
| The Gifts of Grief - A film by Nancee Sabonya | |
Through compelling personal stories, we gain valuable insights from people facing, growing and transforming through grief. What can we learn from our losses? What inner and outer resources do we have to help us cope with our grief? How do we go on? What are the “gifts of grief?” These are the core questions that are explored by ordinary and extraordinary people, including writer, Isabel Allende; Reverend Cecil Williams; writer, Alana Laraine; Zen Monk /Vietnam Veteran, Claude AnShin Thomas; youth motivator, Vinny Ferrero; filmmaker, Lee Mun Wah who celebrate and inspire healing and transformation. The film invites us to open to pain, learn from loss, and teaches us about the preciousness of life. Click here to visit the resource page. | |
| The Grief Process - Meditations for Healing by Stephen and Ondrea Levine | |
This is a combination study guide and 2 cassette tapes. It is an in-depth workshop with the authors that explores how anyone can resolve grief through meditation. Working with a group of people caught in the wake of physical and emotional loss, the Levines explain how grief can lead to an "armoring of the heart," and demonstrate a series of deeply felt exercises they have developed and refined over many years of work with meditation groups, hospice residents, and others. | |
| The Grief Recovery Handbook by J James & R Friedman | |
Incomplete recovery from grief can have a lifelong negative effect on your capacity for happiness. Drawing from their own histories, as well as from others, the authors illustrate what grief is and how it is possible to recover and regain energy and spontaneity. Based on a proven program, now extensively revised, this book offers grievers the specific tools needed to complete the grieving process and acceptance of loss. | |
| The Ultimate End-of-Life Plan by Katy Butler | |
Good article in Wall Street Journal - Sept 6, 2013. How one woman fought the medical establishment and avoided what most Americans fear: prolonged, plugged-in suffering. About the author's mother who chose to forego surgery and other life-extending medical interventions. The article looks at those types of decisions and the impact they have on the dying person as well as the family members. Click here to visit the resource page. | |
| When Someone Dies - The Practical Guide to the Logistics of Death by Scott Taylor Smith with Michael Castleman | |
Scott Taylor Smith, a venture capitalist and lawyer, had plentiful resources, and yet after his mother died, he made a series of agonizing and costly mistakes in squaring away her affairs. He could find countless books that dealt with caring for the dying and the emotional fallout of death, but very few that dealt with the logistics. In the aftermath of his mother’s death, Smith decided to write the book he wished he’d had. When Someone Dies provides readers with a crucial framework for making good, informed, money-saving decisions in the chaotic thirty days after a loved one dies and beyond. It provides essential, concrete guidance on: • Making funeral and memorial service arrangements • Writing an obituary • Estate planning • Contacting family and friends • Handling your loved one’s online footprint • Navigating probate • Dealing with finances, including trusts and taxation • And much, much more Featuring concise checklists in each chapter, this guide offers answers to practical questions, enabling loved ones to save time and money and focus on healing. Click here to visit the resource page. | |
US Resources
| Title | Type | Description | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compassion and Choices | |
Compassion & Choices works with individuals and allied organizations throughout America to: Make aid in dying an open, legitimate option recognized throughout the medical field and permitted in more states. Increase patient control and reduce unwanted interventions at the end of life. Pass additional laws ensuring full information and access to all end-of-life care options. Normalize accurate, unbiased language throughout the end-of-life choice discussion (“aid in dying” instead of “assisted suicide”). Establish aid in dying as a prime motivator in voter decision-making. Support the expansion of the end-of-life choice movement and exert a leadership role in it. Click here to visit the resource page. | |
| Dying Shouldn't Be So Brutal - article in NYTimes | |
Article in New York Times about Hospice Care and issues surrounding a terminal illness. The question of whether a person who is receiving treatment, perhaps an experimental treatment, should be allowed to enter Hospice and Medicare rules surrounding that issue. Click here to visit the resource page. | |
| Elder Care Locator | |
This is a US government website which provides a way to find out about local resources regarding eldercare. The site has a lot of information, links to medical information, links to organizations that can be helpful. Click here to visit the resource page. |
Colorado Resources
| Title | Type | Description | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Natural Transitions | |
We are a NON-PROFIT RESOURCE CENTER 501(c)3 providing education on conscious, holistic, and green approaches to end of life, including family-directed home funerals. The 2 aspects of our EDUCATIONAL WORK are our work with families and communities (presentations, consults with families and care groups, and workshops) – and OUR QUARTERLY, NATIONAL MAGAZINE. Click here to visit the resource page. | |