Month: February 2023

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What Happens When You Die?

— Hospice Workers Share Conversations With Patients as They Near the End of Their Life

By Lyssa Goldberg

Talking about mortality can definitely be a frightening subject. But for some people, like those who work in hospice, discussing what happens when you die may feel like a more natural conversation to have. 

So, what does it feel like to be days from death? And what happens to you when you die? While some of these questions may never be answered, we spoke to several hospice care professionals across the U.S. to find out what they’ve learned from their patients in their final days as they prepared to make a transition from life to death. 

“Very few people are afraid of death. They’re afraid of dying, the process leading to death,” says Travis Overbeck, National Director of Patient Experience for Seasons Hospice.

Of course, no one truly knows what comes next, but some patients have a very clear idea of what they believe should happen once they die, says Overbeck. Hospice workers like himself get to explore their patients’ belief systems and ask them what they’d like their death to look like.

For instance, in the Buddhist tradition, there’s an expectation of silence at the time of death, according to Overbeck, and there should not be any wailing or grieving at the individual’s bedside so they can make their way peacefully into the next life.

“I’ve seen so many patients at the time of death. Most often, there’s this sense of peace and calm, and it’s really beautiful,” Overbeck says. “That’s why I do what I do. It’s all about bringing that peace and comfort to our patients at end of life.”

Here are some of the most common themes that have emerged from end-of-life conversations with hospice workers.

“Would you mind praying for me?”

Overbeck, a chaplain who sees patients of all faiths and backgrounds but practices Christianity himself, remembers his final conversations with a Jewish patient in her last days of life. She said, “I know you’re Christian, and I know I’m Jewish, but would you mind praying for me?”

“What would you like me to pray for?” Overbeck replied.

“I pray that when I die, it will be peaceful, and I will be comforted,” was the patient’s request.

After some conversation, they prayed together and the two hit it off. When Overbeck returned to the hospital the next day, the patient’s friend found him in the hallway. She told Overbeck that the patient had become unresponsive—but before she stopped speaking, the patient asked her friend to have Overbeck pray for her again if he returned.

Overbeck entered the patient’s room and, knowing that hearing is typically the last sense to go, he reintroduced himself and said, “I’m going to go ahead and pray for you.” He prayed again for peace and a comfortable transition. And at the end of his prayers, suddenly the patient began to talk.

“I’m going on a journey to a place I’ve never been before,” she started, “and everybody is sparkling, and everybody is smiling at me.” The patient died about 45 minutes later.

“I don’t care what belief system you are or aren’t. At the end of the day, that’s real. That was her experience,” Overbeck says.

Bringing life closure

Much of Overbeck’s work is dedicated to tying up loose ends and bringing his patients’ life to closure, whether that’s reuniting family members that have become estranged or ensuring the patient’s legacy is preserved. “There’s a process in dying,” Overbeck says. “It’s the opportunities to say, ‘I love you,’ opportunities to say, ‘I forgive you,’ opportunities to ask for forgiveness, opportunities to say, ‘Goodbye.’”

Overbeck recalls another conversation with a patient who was the CEO of a very large, well-known company. “Travis, I had it all,” the CEO told Overbeck. “I had the vacation homes. I was able to send my kids to the finest schools. We traveled the world. But at some point, I lost my focus. I began to value my job and my money more than anything else.”

Along the way, it cost him not only his marriage but his relationship with his kids. In fact, the patient had a grandchild he’d never even meet. Overbeck asked the patient for permission to reach out to his family. A few phone calls later, they were flying into town to visit the hospital.

Overbeck helped facilitate conversations between the patient and his family members, and while he acknowledges it wasn’t easy, he was ultimately able to bring them a feeling of closure. Most importantly, the patient was able to meet his grandchild for the first time. The patient died later that day.

“The biggest realization that I’ve had is that we all have a finite amount of time—it’s about how you’re going to live with that time,” Overbeck says.

Cultivating gratitude

Carolyn Gartner, licensed clinical social worker with Visiting Nurse Service of New York Hospice and Palliative Care, began practicing meditation and studying Buddhism around the same time she started pursuing social work.

Working in hospice care, she’s found her patients hold a perspective of gratitude and acceptance that parallels what she’s been taught through her meditation practice. “I feel my older patients really understand the idea of letting go, and not letting small things bother you,” Gartner says. “We get so caught up in the day-to-day, and I see my older patients are a good role model for how those things pass.”

Gartner works with a diverse array of patients throughout Brooklyn, from celebrities to patients in public housing. Recently, she and a chaplain from VNSNY Hospice went to visit a Jamaican patient who loves Bob Marley music.

The patient’s daughter told them that her mother had experienced a severe explosion of pain the day before, so Gartner prepared to handle the situation sensitively, thinking perhaps the patient wouldn’t want to listen to music that day.

When they walked in the door, however, the patient was wearing a big smile on her face and said: “Okay, ladies, when are you starting the Bob Marley?’”

“I do think that this work, almost every day, reinforces to me: We are energy. We are light. There is a spirit,” Gartner says.

At end-of-life, people like to reflect on their life story, Gartner says. Patients will take out old photos and share stories of joy and pain all in one session. Having studied screenwriting as an undergrad at New York University, Gartner uses these same storytelling techniques with her patients to learn and listen to their stories.

“My observation is that people will often die the way they live, so it’s really interesting to see how people process what they’ve gone through,” she says.

While the patients may seem ready to accept what comes next, Gartner says it’s the families who often need help coming to terms with it. VNSNY Hospice assists with the pre-bereavement process for family caregivers so they can see beyond the grief and enjoy the time they have left with the patient.

“Patients almost always know what’s going on in their body. It’s the family who doesn’t,” she says.

Seeing lost loved ones

Over the years, Kalah Walker, patient care administrator for VITAS Healthcare, has seen numerous hospice cases where the patients will call out to their loved ones who’ve passed, as if they’re seeing someone that everyone else cannot.

Often, they look out into the distance, and the hospice worker knows it’s the name of a family member who’s no longer with us. Generally, this happens within the last days of their life, Walker notes.

“You know what they’re seeing when they’re looking off into the distance…,” she said. “Once they do that, they’re able to let go.”

Sometimes, the patients will ask their hospice worker if they can see the family member too. Walker says it’s important to be there in the moment with them, agree, and allow the moment to happen as the patient is experiencing it. “There’s a nurse who gets to be there to bring life into this world, and we get to stand there and hold a patient’s hands or their family’s hands as a life leaves this world,” she says.

Walker says the real work with end-of-life care comes after the patient passes, however. “Hospice isn’t just about death and dying. It’s about learning about what’s really important in life and keeping those memories alive,” Walker said.

VITAS’ staff supports families who’ve experienced loss with programs like gifting them memory bears as reminders of their loved ones or butterfly release ceremonies. At the butterfly release ceremony, families will open a package and release butterflies into the sky, giving them a chance to reflect and experience a feeling of release themselves. “I’ve seen the butterflies sit there in the moment. You notice they kind of hover around, and it’s almost as if that butterfly is the loved one,” Walker says.

Sources

  • Travis Overbeck, National Director of Patient Experience for Seasons Hospice
  • Carolyn Gartner, licensed clinical social worker with Visiting Nurse Service of New York Hospice and Palliative Care
  • Kalah Walker, patient care administrator for VITAS Healthcare

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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From cradle to compost

— The disruptors who want to make death greener

Startups rush to gain foothold in a burgeoning industry as New York and California move to legalize human composting

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Americans are looking for greener ways to die, and a new wave of deathcare startups are rising to the occasion.

After death, bodies are typically handled in one of two ways: embalmed and buried in a casket, or incinerated and turned into ashes. But both of these options have contributed to the environmental crisis – with fossil fuel-intensive cremation emitting chemicals such as carbon monoxide into the air, and burials taking up large swathes of land.

As interest in alternatives rises, startups aiming to disrupt these practices are gaining steam. New York in January became the sixth state in the US to legalize human composting, also known as “natural organic reduction”, which uses heat and oxygen to speed up the microbial process that converts bodies into soil.

The growth in demand comes in part due to Covid-19, experts say. The pandemic brought death to the forefront of the public consciousness and exposed concerns about its environmental destruction, as places like Los Angeles had to suspend air pollution rules to allow an influx of bodies to be processed.

Human composters are pitching themselves as part of the solution – and trying to dismantle the funeral industry in the process. The potential to alter an age-old practice has brought together former Silicon Valley types, celebrity investors and mission-driven entrepreneurs as interested in lofty green goals as they are in changing our relationship to death.

Katrina Spade, founder and CEO of Recompose, poses with a shrouded mannequin in front of an array of human composting vessels.
Katrina Spade, founder and CEO of Recompose, poses with a shrouded mannequin in front of an array of human composting vessels, in Seattle.

Providers say they are seeing unprecedented demand. The human composting startup Return Home has seen 20 people from California, where human composting is not yet legal, transport loved ones to the company facilities in Washington state – including five who drove with bodies in tow.

“The fact that we are now seeing so many Californians flocking to Return Home in order to pre-purchase services for themselves and their loved ones is proof-positive that [our technology] is the future of funeral services,” said Micah Truman, the company’s CEO and founder.

Founders paint a picture of an industry that is both collegial and competitive, where entrepreneurs connect at meetups and through group chats but often find themselves looking over their shoulders for people entering the industry with less altruistic views. This is especially true as old guards of the funeral industry seek to cash in on the new trend, Truman said.

“It’s interesting because to create disruption, we are going to have to have outsiders coming in,” he said. “Because everyone in the funeral industry is so invested in existing technologies, you need outsiders to help with thinking outside the box – no pun intended.”

An industry poised to explode

Natural organic reduction is a relatively new process, recognized throughout the industry as having been pioneered by a woman named Katrina Spade. In her graduate thesis in 2013, Spade investigated methods farmers had been using to compost animals and found they could be applied to human bodies. When remains are placed in a container with natural materials like straw and wood chips, the microbial process that converts bodies into soil can be accelerated. Composting a human currently takes eight to 12 weeks, and is estimated to use just one-eighth the energy required for cremation.

In the ensuing years, Spade worked with lobbyists, lawmakers and investors to legalize natural organic reduction in Washington in 2019. By December 2020, her company Recompose had made it available to consumers for $7,000 – in line with the median cost of cremation, at $6,971, and the median cost of a funeral with burial, at $7,848, not including cemetery plot costs, which can run upwards of several thousand dollars.

In the years since, at least three companies have sprung up in Washington alone, some of which have secured millions in funding from venture capital firms. And with more states catching on, entrepreneurs say the industry is livelier than ever.

At least six states have legalized the process so far, and California, the most populous US state, will allow human composting in 2027 after a law passed last year goes into effect, opening up the potential for millions of new customers.

“In Washington, where human composting has been legal for some time, the industry is concentrated and hyper-competitive,” Truman said. “But I’m sure everyone is going to be doing pushups and getting ready to go to California as soon as it opens.”

US-DEATH-ENVIRONMENT-RETURN HOMEReturn Home CEO Micah Truman shows a demonstration “vessel” for the deceased, which has been decorated by Return Home with flowers and family photos, during a tour of the funeral home which specializes in human composting in Auburn, Washington on March 14, 2022. - Washington in 2019 became the first in the United States to make it a legal alternative to cremation. (Photo by Jason Redmond / AFP) (Photo by JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images)
Micah Truman shows a demonstration vessel for the deceased, decorated by Return Home with flowers and family photos, in Auburn, Washington.
Truman holds a sample bag containing composted animal remains.
Truman holds a sample bag containing composted animal remains.

The commercialization of alternative deathcare is already creating tension in an industry built on a fraught product. It’s difficult to get people to talk about death, much less invest in it. This has left deathcare entrepreneurs and advocates for greener death grappling to balance altruistic goals with the demands of startup culture, according to Caitlin Doughty, a mortician and author of several books about death and the funeral industry.

“There is a newer disconnect between the fundamental idea of ritual around death in human composting versus a bizarre appeal to Silicon Valley that is emerging,” she said. “It is a fascinating development.”

With the traditional funeral market worth $20bn, it is no surprise new technologies have piqued the interest of tech investors. A 2019 survey from the funeral directors’ association found that nearly 52% of Americans expressed interest in green-burial options, and experts have estimated that the emerging market opened by legalization efforts in Massachusetts, Illinois, California and New York could create a market value in the $1bn range.

There is also a growing market in Gen Z and millennials, who have been called the “death positive” generation – more willing to discuss after-life plans at younger ages and try green alternatives. Startups are rising to the occasion with social media outreach: Return Home has more than 617,000 followers on TikTok, where its employees answer questions like “what happens to hip replacements in the human composting process?” and “how does it smell during the process?”

Human composting is not the only alternative deathcare option that is seeing increased interest. Others include aquamation, a process legal in 28 states by which the body is turned into liquid and then powder. Green burial, in which bodies are interred without embalming or a casket and allowed to decompose naturally over time, is legal in almost all states, but laws vary as to where the body can be buried.

portrait
Darren Aronofsky is one of the more high profile supporters of human composting startups.

But of all the alternative options, human composting seems to have gotten the most attention, said Doughty.

“I do see the composting space as being uniquely competitive in a way that I haven’t seen with [other processes] like aquamation or even cremation,” she said. “It seems uniquely positioned at a nexus of climate change policy and new technology that appeals to the Silicon Valley ethos.”

A focus on ethics

The environmental benefits of alternative deathcare have become a large selling point for companies as green investments trend upwards. Transcend, a New York-based green burial startup that promises to turn human bodies into trees after death, highlights its goal of mass reforestation and eco-friendly burial in its advertising, stating on its website: “Every Tree Burial creates a healthier foundation for all life on Earth.”

Its founder and CEO, Matthew Kochmann, has a Silicon Valley background, counting himself as one of the first employees at Uber. He came to the deathcare industry after meditating on the spiritual nature of burial options, he says.

“I was thinking about how I personally would like to become a tree after death, and I realized that there weren’t any options out there to make that happen – I’d have to do it myself,” he said. “I am a huge advocate of helping heal humanity’s relationship and fear around mortality.”

Through Transcend’s process, the body is buried in organic biodegradable flax linen along with a unique blend of fungi-enriched soil, and a young tree is planted in the ground above it. The company says the mushrooms then “work their magic” to ensure “a direct connection between the nutrient-rich body and the tree’s root system so that the body can literally become the tree”.

wood chips in a tray inside a circular module
A Recompose cradle in Seattle.

The company has piqued the interest of investors and celebrities, with Darren Aronofsky, director of Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream, counting himself among the company’s advisers. Still, fundraising hadn’t always been easy, Kochmann said, adding that some investors had told him: “We don’t invest in taboo areas like pornography or death.”

“Putting death on par with pornography just shows that there’s still a lot of work to do in our culture and our society to get people more comfortable with it,” he said.

Recompose, the original human composting startup, has raised nearly $18m – none of which, its founder is quick to point out, came from traditional venture capital funds, but instead from accredited “values-aligned investors”, Spade said – investors who “are first and foremost investing for the mission and the vision” of Recompose.

Spade said the company had prioritized fundraising models that allow it to stay true to its roots as an advocacy group while still creating sustainable funding. It has also launched a “community fund” to help subsidize its services for clients who cannot afford to pay full price.

The company has worked directly with legislators to pass laws that allow for human composting while creating a framework that supports strong ethics in the burgeoning industry.

“We want to be sure that any kind of human composting operator that’s working with grieving families is doing so within the utmost ethical practices,” she said. “It is not only about how to decompose, operate, and care for our clients – but also, how can we support an industry that always has the most ethical, rigorous operations?”

Spade said although her company had been the first to pioneer human composting, she was “thrilled” to see the movement grow. And although the new frontier of deathcare is getting increasingly crowded in some places, those involved say there is an environment of camaraderie and support as they work towards a common goal: taking down the monopoly that the traditional funeral industry has on death.

“This is a community that has to prioritize solidarity,” said Kochmann. “You are fighting for legislation, you are fighting regulatory battles, and you are fighting an uphill consumer battle because people don’t want to think about death.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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‘How to Grieve: An Ancient Guide to the Lost Art of Consolation’

“How to Grieve: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Consolation” gives insight into how to properly grieve and how to think about death, tragedy, and other misfortunes. (Princeton University Press)

By Dustin Bass

When it comes to grieving, consolation is often best received from someone who has dealt with grief before. They bring experience (unfortunately, it takes misfortune to receive such experience) and provide wisdom in how to deal with heartache and tragedy.

In one of the recent editions from Princeton University Press’s ongoing series, “Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers,” the ancient wisdom comes from the great Roman statesman and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero. In “How to Grieve: An Ancient Guide to the Lost Art of Consolation,” readers are shown insight into how to properly grieve and how to think about death, tragedy, and other misfortunes.

To begin, Michael Fontaine, the translator of the classic work “Consolation,” discusses how the original was primarily written in response to the untimely death of Cicero’s daughter, Tullia. More importantly, in the introduction, he discusses how the work he has translated is actually not Cicero’s at all, but was rather built upon the idea of Cicero’s lost work, which was lost around the fourth century.

This translation is based off of the work that arose suddenly in 1583 and had its authenticity debated for centuries. Although it was eventually concluded that it was not authentic, this doesn’t mean that the spirit of Cicero is not part of the work; indeed, it is.

As Fontaine states, “Not all fakes are fakes in the same way. This fake [“Consolation”] is not a fabrication, but a recreation.” The work utilized the remaining fragments from the original and the entire work has a style that is “highly Ciceronian.” For all intents and purposes, this is Cicero at work, as it was so expertly researched and written.

The Message

The message from Cicero is that death is a gift. In fact, he claims it to be the greatest gift. He admits how difficult it was to attain that perspective after the loss of his daughter. He had studied the Stoics extensively, but until his daughter died, those philosophies had not sunk in.

Through this work, he encourages the reader to see death as a kindness and accept it unquestioningly as part of life. In a phrase, he suggests that the only two things that are certain are death and that life is uncertain.

Cicero issues a warning about excessive grieving. He compares excessive and long-term grieving to slavery because it practically incapacitates a person. He warns about losing one’s dignity and character during times of grief. He writes that “nothing is more unbecoming and unmanly than exaggerated grief.”

For readers who have or have yet to experience intense grief, this stoic perspective may be too harsh, and in some ways it is. In fact, Cicero writes “since it’s my wound I’m healing, those who pick this book up shouldn’t be surprised if anything strikes them as a little overwrought. That was my plan. I want to help myself and everyone else simultaneously. To the extent I can, I also aim to offer comprehensive consolation for everyone’s grief.”

Cicero lists many Roman and non-Roman men and women who exemplified fortitude during grief. He states the specific tragedy and how that individual responded to the tragedy in the immediate and over time.

As the book continues, the author seems to rein in some of the harshness by striking a balance between grieving and stoicism. He states that it would be “unnatural and inhuman” to feel no grief at all, but follows by stating that to “overindulge in grief” is to reject our “universal condition”―that being death itself.

The Bliss of Death

The ultimate message Cicero seems to send is that death is a favor for all mankind because it eliminates our suffering. The worries and concerns, the pains and heartaches, and (as mentioned from some of his examples) the falls from grace can all be ended with death. He adds that there is often a price to be paid for living too long, a price that he himself was quite familiar with, as he had suffered exile, the death of his daughter, the demise of the Republic, and ultimately (though obviously not mentioned in the book) his murder by Mark Antony.

The author doesn’t suggest that all will have a gleeful time once they have been removed from this life. That heavenly hope is reserved for the righteous and the good. The wicked, however, have hell to look forward to. Cicero discusses the immortal soul as the obvious reason for the heavenly hope. Death is not the end; it is merely the end of suffering.

Regarding heaven, Cicero goes further to discuss the deification of those righteous, even Romulus, the founder of Rome (though this somewhat calls into question his definition of righteous). He lists others who have been deified because of their goodness, and in the end adds his daughter to that saintly list.

An Interesting Perspective on Grief

In the modern world, Stoicism is a lost art, especially in the face of tragedy. There is plenty in this work that readers will disagree with, whether on emotional or spiritual and religious grounds, but it is interesting to see how Cicero dealt with his own grief, and as the translator makes clear, “Consolation” is a work of Cicero’s thinking and belief system.

“How to Grieve” is an interesting read on death, grief, and how one might adjust their view on all of it, or at least how they respond to it.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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It’s not un-Christian to support assisted dying

— Christian beliefs seem to underpin the views of many people opposed to assisted dying in the UK. As Prue Leith appears in an illuminating documentary about the practice for Channel 4, Kate Ng argues that allowing others to experience ‘good death’ is the most Christian thing you can do

Danny Kruger and Prue Leith in ‘Prue and Danny’s Death Road Trip’

My mother and I had a conversation about death recently. It wasn’t awkward or prolonged. In fact, it was a very brief exchange in the middle of a Christmas market in Germany while we waited for our bratwurst. “I think people live too long these days,” she told me. “I don’t want to live till I’m 100. And if I get sick, I don’t want to get to a point where it’s not worth living any more.” I agreed with her, we got our bratwurst, and went about our day.

I know many people will think this is morbid, but I’m glad that my mother and I are able to have casual conversations about death. Not because life isn’t precious, but because it’s too precious to dance around subjects like this. We all deserve a good death, just as we deserve good lives. Why not talk about it?

So when Prue Leith announced her new Channel 4 documentary about assisted dying, I was intrigued. Assisted dying, also known as assisted suicide, is defined by the NHS as the act of “deliberately assisting a person to kill themselves” and is illegal in the UK. The British Medical Journal says it is usually used in the context of “giving assistance to die to people with long-term progressive conditions and other people who are not dying, in addition to patients with a terminal illness”.

In short, if someone with a terminal illness or a condition that gets progressively worse wants to end their life, assisted dying would enable them to do so on their own terms. The alternative is to wait days, weeks, or even months to die. Leith argues that assisted dying is the most humane scenario here. I think she’s absolutely right about this.

However, Leith’s son Danny Kruger, the Tory MP for Devizes, strongly opposes his mother’s views. A staunch Christian, Kruger is the chair of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for dying well, which “promotes access to excellent care at end of life” and campaigns for better resources for hospice and palliative care services. This is an important and necessary cause. However, the group also “stands against the legalisation of doctor-assisted suicide in the UK”.

This puts Kruger head to head with his mother. Their documentary, Prue and Danny’s Death Road Trip, tackles this difficult discussion between mother and son, and sees them travelling across Canada – where assisted dying is legal – to speak to people who bolster both sides of their argument. At one point in the show, Leith hits the nail on the head when she asks her son if the root of his objection is because of his faith’s belief that “suffering is good for the soul”. Kruger replies: “I think suffering is part of life, but I don’t think we should suffer unnecessarily.” He doesn’t seem to grasp the irony of what he’s saying.

I would like the option to have a good death of my own choosing

Leith also points out that “a lot” of the APPG for dying well’s membership is made up of Christians, yet the individual members seem to avoid acknowledging the influence of their beliefs. They also seem to decline to admit that assisted dying goes against Christian beliefs. “Nobody would use that as their argument,” Kruger says in response. “We don’t go around saying, ‘God says don’t do this,’ I mean, that would be mad.”

But as long as assisted dying remains illegal in the UK, unnecessary suffering will continue. Perhaps he doesn’t want to believe it, but what Kruger is essentially saying – with all his religious bias – is that even if you’re already dying, you shouldn’t be given the choice to leave this mortal plane unless God decides it’s time for you to go.

As someone who grew up in a born-again Christian household, I know exactly how much Christians think suffering is crucial to the human experience. The idea is that the more you suffer in the name of God, the better your chances are of getting into heaven. So it’s hypocritical of Christians like Kruger to say they don’t think people should suffer unnecessarily.

The argument against assisted dying claims that legalising it would result in a “slippery slope that could lead to widespread abuse and distress” of vulnerable people. Members of the dying well group say that placing restrictions around who can access the service would not work, and the net would become wider and wider, even allowing people with no health conditions to qualify. Certainly, these are questions that need to be answered, and any policy drawn up should consider how vulnerable people will be protected. But, given that three-quarters of Britons support assisted dying for people who are terminally ill, MPs must begin having open and constructive conversations about changing the law.

I think about dying a lot. Not in a morbid or harmful way, but I think about how I want to die and what kind of memories I want to leave behind. And if it turns out that I should wind up with a terminal illness or a progressively chronic condition, then I would like the option to have a good death of my own choosing. I want my loved ones to remember me with joy, not with sadness or trauma at having watched me suffer till the end. It would be far more humane than any of “God’s work”.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Featuring death and grief in children’s books can equip them with skills to navigate emotional terrain

— We don’t need to overload young people with everything that adults carry, but we should be as truthful as we can for their age

By Nova Weetman

When I was eight, mum read me EB White’s classic, Charlotte’s Web. We took it in turns to cry. Hers were the tears of a mother fearing leaving her babies, and mine were the tears of a kid feeling everything for Wilbur the pig when his beloved friend Charlotte died.

When I was 10, Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia broke my heart. Huddled under blankets, I read late into the night, between gulps of tears. I had to know if Jesse would survive his grief and guilt after his best friend, Leslie, drowned in the river.

The book also grapples with class and poverty, bullying and religion. An ambitious work, it won many literary awards. It has also been banned and challenged hundreds of times in American schools and public libraries. The reasons are complex but include the fact the book deals with death, witchcraft, swearing and atheism (Leslie doesn’t attend church).

Bridge to Terabithia was my literary introduction into the idea that a girl like me could die. Yes, it upset me, but it didn’t scare me or make me wary of living. Instead, it allowed me to feel the depths of sadness, anger and acceptance that Jesse feels.

As parents, we want to protect our children from experiencing unnecessary heartache. We want them to feel safe, loved and happy. The world is grim enough without handing them books that make them contemplate death. But dying isn’t something we can shield them from. They watch films, they talk to their friends, they lose grandparents and pets and sometimes even parents, and they understand that life isn’t forever, and that sometimes people can die too soon.

I believe that death, grief and other intense emotions have a place in children’s fiction. We must trust authors and illustrators to know how to present these experiences to children in age-appropriate ways. We don’t need to overload young people with everything that adults carry, but we do need to honour them by being as truthful as we can for their age, and we can do this by leading them gently, and by giving them hope that things can change, or be survived.

Now more than ever, in the light of everything that is going on in the world, we need to equip children with the skills to navigate emotional terrain – not protect them from it. Books can help children to process emotions while feeling safe.

My latest middle grade book, The Jammer, is about a 12-year-old girl called Fred whose mother has died before the story starts. It is not about her death, it is about Fred’s journey to finding a new family of disparate people, and about her realising that it is OK to feel sad and happy and everything in-between. It is also about love, hope, friendship and joy, because those are often the feelings that accompany the grief and the loss.

We can explore death in children’s books through humour, fantasy, ghost stories and realism. And the beauty of books is that children will take what they need when they are reading. If they don’t understand something, then they’ll skip that bit or simply close the book.

In The Jammer, Fred doesn’t talk about her mum dying. She won’t discuss it with anyone, not even her dad. And then slowly she starts to let her step-uncle Graham share little moments of her grief because his mother died when he was young, and he understands what it feels like to mourn.

When my kids lost their dad, they didn’t want to talk about it. They didn’t want to be known as the kids with the dead dad when they went back to school after the lockdowns ended. So much so that six months after he had died, some of my daughter’s social group still didn’t know.

My teenage son made a new friend this year. A girl whose mum died when she was two. They never talk about death. Or losing a parent. They just understand.

I think books are like that too. Characters can seem like our best friends when we are kids. They don’t have to be the same as us. They just have to make us feel like we belong. Like we aren’t alone. Like we are understood.

Not every kid will want to read about a parent dying. It won’t happen to most children in their young lifetimes. But it does happen to some. And I think it’s important to help children understand the incomprehensible so they can be more empathic and kinder. Books are a way we can teach young people how to understand the world is not just theirs. It is not just one experience. But many.

And I think we owe it to young readers to be honest, and not to pretend things are easy just because they are children. Regardless of the genre and of the tone of our stories, books are a place children come to hide, to learn, to laugh, and sometimes even, to cry. And when they finish a book, it might stay with them and change their world, just a little, like Wilbur the Pig did for me.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The Good Death Through Time

By Caitlin Mahar, Melbourne University Press, $35.00.

Reviewed by Rama Gaind

How likely is it that our ancestors can help us now to face complex questions of dying?

The Good Death Through Time delves into the history of how people’s responses to dying have changed in western societies. We also get to understand when and why other Australians began to find the notion of a physician-assisted death appealing.

This book also asks how such a death became a ‘thinkable’-even desirable-way to die for so many others in western cultures. In particular, it looks at the radical way in which they changed in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries.

“I have quite a bit of understanding of white man’s ways, but it is difficult for me to understand this one.” ― G Ntjalka Williams, Ntaria Council President, 1997

An Australian Senate committee investigation of the Northern Territory’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995, the first legislation in the world that allowed doctors to actively assist patients to die, found that for the vast majority of Indigenous Territorians, the idea that a physician ― or anyone else ― should help end a dying, suffering person’s life was so foreign that in some instances it proved almost impossible to translate.

For centuries a good death ― the ‘euthanasia’ ― meant a death blessed by God that might well involve pain, for suffering was seen as ultimately redemptive.

This book explores the modern idea that a good death should be painless, bearing in mind sometimes disturbing developments in palliative medicine, and an increasingly well-organised assisted dying movement. We are able to understand the radical historical shift in western attitudes to managing dying and suffering helps us better grasp the stakes in today’s controversies over what it means to die well.

Through unwavering research, Mahar writes an articulate and well-grounded guide to what people have thought and felt about dying.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Estate Planning

— An At-a-Glance Overview

Estate planning, or legacy planning, entails preparing your affairs for the future, including death and other life events. While older adults might give more thought to estate planning, it is an essential tool at any age.

Why It’s Important

With estate planning, individuals and families can protect their interests after death or incapacity.

  • You can provide for their spouses, children, and dependent family members when you pass away.
  • You can arrange your care and financial affairs should you suffer a severe accident or illness that renders you incapacitated.
  • If you are a parent, you can nominate a guardian to care for and manage the inheritance of your minor children.
  • If you own a business, you can prepare to transfer it to family members, colleagues, or other trusted individuals.
  • You can make arrangements for your long-term care when you can no longer live on your own.
  • You can also make funeral preparations, determine what happens to your body when you pass, and prepay for your funeral, all of which can help lessen the burden on your family members.

What Is an Estate?

Legacy planning entails passing on your estate. Your estate is everything you own, including:

  • Savings and checking accounts
  • Retirement accounts
  • Investments
  • Life insurance
  • Annuities
  • House and other real estate
  • Car
  • Personal possessions, such as jewelry, furniture, and sentimental items

When you die, your estate encompasses all your property upon death. If you sold or gave away property before death, it is no longer part of your estate, and you cannot transfer it upon death.

Items you own with another person are also part of your estate. Depending on the type of asset, it might automatically pass to the other owner. For instance, if you own a home with your spouse as tenants by the entirety, it will pass to your spouse upon your death.

What Is an Estate Plan?

An estate plan consists of legal documents and arrangements that determine the distribution of your assets when you die or outline your care if you become incapacitated.

While a will can be a central component of an estate plan, a solid plan encompasses more than a will. It can also include legal tools that allow assets to pass outside of a will and probate, the process by which a court oversees the distribution of assets in a will.

Estate Planning Tools

In addition to your will, your estate plan could include the following:

  • Purchasing jointly owned property or adding a joint owner to your property
  • Designating a beneficiary on a pay-on-death bank account, retirement account, or annuity
  • Buying life insurance to benefit your family should you pass away
  • Creating a trust for a child
  • Obtaining long-term care insurance to cover future nursing home or assisted living fees
  • Executing power of attorney documents, naming health care and financial agents
  • Making a living will, providing instructions for care should you become incapacitated
  • Preparing a transfer on death instrument to pass ownership of your property to a beneficiary upon death

What Is an Estate Planner?

As professionals helping people make future arrangements, estate planners are attorneys who focus on end-of-life preparations. Estate planning attorneys assist people with drafting legal documents and understanding laws and taxes that could affect them and the loved ones they will leave behind.

When creating estate plans, individuals may need to consult attorneys as well as other experts, including financial planners, accountants, life insurance advisors, bankers, and real estate brokers.

What Does the Final Distribution of Assets Involve?

The final distribution of assets is a conclusory step in the probate process before the court closes probate. When an estate goes through probate, the personal representative must satisfy all debts, and the court must resolve all disputes before allowing the beneficiaries to receive the assets. The court transfers ownership of the assets to the beneficiaries during the final distribution of assets.

Do I Need a Lawyer for Estate Planning?

Although the law does not require that individuals secure legal representation to make estate plans, many find the support and guidance of estate planning attorneys invaluable. An estate planning attorney can help you identify the legal tools and strategies that suit your needs, as well as draft the necessary documents, such as wills, trusts, and powers of attorney. A legacy planning lawyer can help you preserve your estate’s wealth and may work with tax professionals.

In addition to addressing tax concerns and drafting documents, these attorneys can help you avoid probate. Probate, the process by which the court oversees the distribution of assets in a will, can be expensive and time-consuming for surviving family members. It also opens the door for disgruntled people to challenge the validity of the testamentary document, further complicating asset distribution. An estate planning attorney could help you organize your assets to transfer outside of probate to make the transfers simpler, easier, and less vulnerable to challenges.

Consult with an estate planning attorney in your area for assistance in creating a legacy plan.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!