By Cynthia Greenlee — 2019
End-of-life caregiving is an ancient practice that’s now re-emerging in the death positivity movement, which urges a shift in thinking about death as natural and not traumatic.
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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.
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.
Is a “good death” just an oxymoron? Or can the experience of death be far more positive—an opportunity for growth and meaning?
The truth is that many of us just don’t know the right words to comfort someone who is dying.
Sean Illing and Frank Ostaseski discuss what Ostaseski has learned from the conversations he’s had with the dying.
Frank Ostaseski is a tall, slim man with blue eyes that radiate calm. As director of the San Francisco Zen Center’s Hospice Program, he counsels the dying and their families, and teaches others to care for people with terminal illness.
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.
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.”
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.