This graphic is a new accompaniment to The Promised Landing: A Gateway to Peaceful Dying. It contextualizes what the book presents. A version of this graphic appears for the first time in the May 2018 revision of The Promised Landing, on page 169. 21st Century end-of-life Milieu The top gear set depicts the end of life totality […]
The following excerpt is taken from the opening sections of The Promised Landing: A Gateway to Peaceful Dying: Is This Book for You? Have you endured, during the demise of a loved one, circumstances so distressing that you are determined to never experience a situation like that again? Are you worried that deaths of loved […]
On Wednesday 24 October 2012 at Denver’s Oriental Theatre I joined 14 other speakers at Ignite Denver 12 in presenting 5 minute talks called “sparks.” These highly structured presentations require 20 slides (of one’s own making) that auto advance every 15 seconds (you can’t control them yourself; no running one slide for 23 seconds and […]
The Mayo Clinic has started an annual social media in healthcare conference. This time around Mayo is offering all-expenses paid scholarships, awarded on the judging of essays that make the cut after an initial round of social media likes and comments. My essay appears below. Some of what it contains I’ve written before in this […]
Today a gift arrived via email. Sandy Booth of Crossings Care Circle , providing home funeral guidance for people in and around Austin, Texas, attended conferences in 2011 and 2012 at which I presented. She sent me some excerpts from Wendell Berry’s 2005 novel, Hanna Coulter. I’m an ok writer, but Berry is a *writer*, as these […]
. Sometimes a little verse goes a longer way. Just in case you want to die in peace:
The following is a 750-word op-ed that originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on 4.8.12. At first I didn’t think I could condense a day-long conversation into 1150 words (I mimicked the word count that paid freelance columnists get). I did—but papers really do enforce their word counts for you and me so that […]
On March 11 2012 Dr. Peter Goodwin ended his life under the law he helped create—the Oregon Death With Dignity Act. A short video interview with him is available here. Self-directed dying, for those diagnosed by several physicians as terminal with 6 months or less to live, offers a peaceful demise to those who are […]
. In order to achieve a peaceful death, patient-families, that is all of we citizens, actually need to do something. “Something” is a range of things comprising a bit of study and contemplation. I’ll share what I consider to be the most important aspects. 1. Become familiar with how we die in a technological society. […]
It’s back: that scary phrase, that bald lie: “death panel.” As in, “the United States government will enact or enable panels of bureaucrats who will withhold medical treatment from your grandma or grandpa and let them instead die.” This was a (failed) provision of 2010’s healthcare reform act; now the accusers say that death panels […]
