Research points to rise in deep grief as more families are left wondering what more could have been done.
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“After a two-hour appointment in which my mother was assessed and then diagnosed with dementia … my stepfather announced, “OK! So there’s nothing wrong with her!”
“I have the privilege to learn and hear interesting perspectives, along with all the questions and comments that our community members have, on the topics of death and dying. Here are a few insights I have gleaned from these discussions.”
“Question: Are you able to face death with your friend or do you bail?”
Death. Mortality. End of Life. Something inevitable, yet rarely discussed and a source of intense discomfort for most. When mentioned, it is considered inauspicious and rude in many cultures. Death is an integral part of the workday for a Critical Care Physician like me. But it was never a topic of discussion in Medical School or training.
Most view dementia as a person leaving them. But they’re not. They’re evolving into a new person, similar but not exact. Their capacity to perform tasks and retain memory of recent events doesn’t disqualify them from continuing to be loved and treated with dignity and respect, especially when the end is near.
It’s time that we revise and refine our cultural lexicon around this emergent end-of-life practice. A medically assisted death definitively warrants a linguistic and conceptual category of its own.
It’s important to have age-appropriate dialogue with children about death.
It is primarily through having places to “story” that people have the opportunity to try to make sense of the senseless, to embrace what needs to be embraced, and to reveal that the human spirit prevails.
The day I became a widow was the day I began my desperate attempt to crawl toward any sliver of light after my life shattered into a million pieces.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
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