Tag: Dying
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You’re dying. So what else is new?
The inescapable implication of being alive is that you will die. Most of us accept our mortality in a kind of abstract way. We are aware of it but choose not to dwell on it. Fortunately, life offers us plenty of reasons to ignore it. For most of us, simply surviving is a full time […]
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Thoughts on death and dying
Should dying be scary? Should being dead be scary? It seems for most of us the gut answer to both questions is yes. There is a lot of money to be made feeding our fears and phobias around death and dying. The beauty industry depends on its ability to sell us on, if not on […]
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Acts of mercy
For every Walter Cronkite who passes on, there are thousands of prominent people who warrant obituaries but rarely make the national news. Two notables in the Washington region passed recently, both of them developers. Abe Pollin was perhaps best known as the longtime owner of The Washington Wizards, but he made his fortune in the […]
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A grave business
Life is about living, right? So why spend any time at all planning for death? After all, there are few things more certain in life than death and taxes. Once you are dead, unless you are Jesus Christ, you can forget about coming back to life. The best use of my corpse will be pushing […]
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Trapped in the portal called life
I had a creative writing teacher in college. He was one of these intense, bearded, Birkenstock types who, doubtlessly parroting someone else, said there are only two seismic mysteries in life: sex and death. At the time, as I was only 18, I was far more focused on the sex part than the death part. […]
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In Life’s Last Throes
It is Thursday evening and I am on the road in Helena, Montana. I arrive back at my hotel after a long day of work. In my email box was an ominous note from my father about my mother: “I cannot say that (her) death is imminent, but it may be… she didn’t respond to […]
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Seize the day
For those of you wondering about my dying mother, she is still alive and unfortunately she is not improving. I do my best to visit her once a week. I try to visit on Saturdays around lunchtime. This usually works best for my schedule. I arrive about forty-five minutes before lunch. By this time, her […]
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In the final lap of life, anxious, but embraced in love
How much longer does she have? That is our mostly unspoken family question. Occasionally one of my siblings or I will venture an opinion. One brother suggested that my mother has no more than three months to live. My own opinion: she could easily live a year or more. Of course, it is a bit […]
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In the Nursing Home
When my time comes to depart this earth, I want it to be unexpected and swift. I want to be doing something innocuous like reading the paper one moment then be instantly dead. Is that too much to ask? Perhaps in the afterlife I would regret my decision. Perhaps I would have wanted closure. Perhaps […]
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The Vortex of Dying
Five weeks ago my 85-year-old mother could still get around. It was true that she often needed assistance. About half the time she could raise herself into her walker. Yes, she was a bit awkward shuffling forward or turning in her walker. But once started she could generally push herself forward. When she sat she […]
Occam's Razor 