Originating in England, Death Cafés may just be the best export from England since, dare I say it, the Beatles. The concept is this: people in a community come together at a safe, neutral space to talk about death. No admission fee is ever charged. These gathering can be hosted by anyone, so it could […]
1.4 million people, age 65 and older, are treated in emergency rooms every year in this country for injuries due to falls and house fires. After reading that statistic, I thought about how many of those 1.4 million people could not go home after their injury and ended up in a nursing home or assisted […]
Here’s the short answer: PERSONAL SAFETY = STAYING AT HOME! We all like living in our homes. Whether we live in a one room studio apartment or a house, home is where we feel safe and where we create our own space. This post is the first in a series on how we can stay […]
After decades of dealing with death and end of life care, I have this one belief: We each will die the same way we choose to live. What does that mean? What am I trying to say here? Think about it this way and ask yourself: Do you meet problems and challenges in your personal […]
Updated November 2016 Why is it so hard for us to talk about death? I think we, as humans, experience fear when we face the unknown, and death is the greatest unknown event in our lives. Yet we will each die, in some fashion, at some point. This vulnerability of our human form is downright […]
I wish I could say we have advanced as a society in America in the last 30 years around our understanding of how we support a dying person through hospice, whether they are at home, in a hospital, or in a nursing home. The truth is that I find myself starting from scratch every time […]