By Annie Stuart
When a pet dies, it's common for people to feel as though they've lost a member of the family. For children, this is often their first encounter with death.
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CLEAR ALL
You not calling, as a friend, can actually compound the grief and loss they are feeling. Just pick up the phone, even if you get it wrong, just have a conversation and do your best. Your friend with cancer is still the same person they were before.
The truth is that many of us just don’t know the right words to comfort someone who is dying.
No matter what you say to someone whose parent or loved one died, it should be derivative of the same goal: communicating empathy and offering assistance, understanding what a person might need from you, and knowing how to phrase sentiments the right way.
Understanding the difference between a spiritual crisis and a mental illness is important to get to the root of the problem.
Spiritual “emergencies” require understanding from mental health professionals.
In most modern cultures, it’s common for people to feel uneasy about death. We express this discomfort by avoiding conversations on the topic and lowering our voices when speaking of the dead and dying.
With each diagnosis, knowing her life hung in the balance, she was “stunned, then anguished” and astonished by “how much energy it takes to get from the bad news to actually starting on the return path to health.”
Studies of dying patients who seek a hastened death have shown that their reasons often go beyond physical ones like intractable pain or emotional ones like feeling hopeless.
My Feb. 5 column, “A Heartfelt Appeal for a Graceful Exit,” prompted a deluge of information and requests for information on how people too sick to reap meaningful pleasure from life might be able to control their death.
Though I wince at the redundancy, funeral “pre-planning” is a phenomenon receiving increased attention, and a growing number of Web-based guides tell how to go about it. As www.funerals.org puts it: “Funeral planning starts at home.