By Maria Popova — 2014
“The greatest dignity to be found in death is the dignity of the life that preceded it.”
Read on www.brainpickings.org
CLEAR ALL
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.
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.
A calm mind and even temper can help make peace with life’s difficulties.
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When I got sick, I warned my friends: Don’t try to make me stop thinking about death.
Zen training talks a lot about death. But one practitioner found that it doesn’t necessarily prepare you to face your own.
Both providers and patients do have power to shape their experience together, especially if they take the time to have a few crucial conversations. In the spirit of palliation, here are a few things, as a physician, I wish I could share more often with patients and their caregivers.
A month ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out—a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver.