Category: Cultural Expressions

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How To Stay Famous After You Die.

AI Scientists Have An Answer

By Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD

If you are a young public figure, and will die an unnatural death, then I have good news for you! You will most likely be remembered for a long time after you die. Conversely, if you are older, are not a public figure, and will die of a natural cause, then the odds that you will be forgotten over time are strong.

Remembering those who have passed on from this life has been an important theme throughout human history. Our ancestors used to remember those who died by sharing their memories with the next generation in the form of stories and ballads. They would sit around a fire and exchange memories and hope they would be passed through generations after them. Later when the printing press was invented, humans began to store, collect and spread information on a massive scale. The printing press made it easier to collect and preserve memories of the deceased because it is easier to store written pieces of information. Today, the developments in communication technologies such as the internet have changed how we create, store and retain memories. The internet also allows us to analyze memory through large-scale data in a quantitative framework.

Being remembered after death has been such an important concern throughout history that civilizations such as the Romans considered damnatio memoriae, or being erased from the public’s memory, as one of the severest punishments imaginable. At some point, many of us might have wondered how we will be remembered after passing on from this life too.

The h-index, the number of research papers with the same number of citations is one of the common ways to evaluate academic performance. It is a very important number in academia. The mean and median H‐index for all peer reviewed papers at the time of promotion to Professor in the JHU School of Medicine is 25 and 23 respectively. In computer science and math, scientists do not cite each other as often as in biomedicine and there are very few young computer scientists with the H-index of 100. So it is natural to follow them on Google Scholar and learn about their research. One of the scholars I follow is Jure Leskovec (h-index = 117) the co-author of the famous node2vec and an authority on graph neural networks (GNNs).

So imagine my surprise, when I saw the paper by Robert West, Jure Leskovec, and Christopher Potts titled “Post-mortem memory of public figures in news and social media” in my Scholar feed. I don’t know any of the authors personally but based on their work, they are extremely credible, and productive. In this paper the authors identified trends and analyzed how people are remembered in news and social media one year before and after death. It technically answers a question how long will your name last in people’s memory after you die. We know what you needed to do in ancient Greece to make it last (hello, Achilles!) but what about today? So, if you ever wondered how you can stay famous after you die, then this paper is for you!

Robert is an assistant professor in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne where he also leads the data science lab. Jure is an associate professor of computer science at Stanford University. He is also an investigator at nonprofit research organization Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. Meanwhile, Christopher is professor and chair of the linguistics department at Stanford University.

Despite their varying backgrounds, the trio have a few things in common: they are experts in the field of artificial intelligence and data analytics.

In this short but fascinating paper, the three scientists tracked mentions of 2,362 public figures in English-language online news and social media (Twitter) one year before and after death. The tracked people died between 2009 and 2014. They then looked at the spike and decay of attention after death and modeled the two as the interplay of communicative memory, which is “sustained by the oral transmission of information” and cultural memory, which is “sustained by the physical recording of information.”

In order to track mentions, they combined the Freebase knowledge base with online news and social media compiled through Spinn3r, an online media aggregation service that tracks mentions from a complete set of all 6,608 English-language web domains indexed by Google News as well as media posts from Twitter. For each of the 2,362 people, the scientists tracked the frequency with which they were remembered in the two medias on a daily basis during the year before and the year after death. This allowed them to quantify the spikes and decay of attention that follow the death of public figures. 

The analysis of mention frequencies revealed that for most public figures, a sharp increase of media attention followed immediately after death, whereby mention frequency increased by 9,400% in the news and by 28,000% on Twitter in the median. The average mention frequency then declined around one month after death and eventually decayed slowly to the pre-mortem level. These two stages are consistent with the two components of collective memory: communicative memory, which dominates early on and decays quickly, and cultural memory, which dominates starting around two weeks after death and decays slowly.

Based on the study, the researchers concluded that artists remain more present in the collective memory because they tend to leave a legacy that can long survive them, whereas leaders, athletes, etc who are noteworthy for the actions they take during their lifetime, are of decreased interest once they cannot replicate their actions anymore. This is most pronounced for leaders. Artists also stand out with respect to cultural memory, while no notability type stands out with respect to communicative memory. Ceteris paribus, an unnatural death, also increased the rank with respect to the short-term mention. The effect of age at death also was significant. For instance, on Twitter, the post-mortem boost was monotonically and negatively associated with age at death. Likewise, the increased short-term boost associated with unnatural deaths was more pronounced in the news than on Twitter.

Separately, the study also revealed that Twitter users pay less attention when an old public figure or leader died. Deaths of these poor souls were boosted more by the news both in the short and long-term. Additionally, the researchers noted that future studies may also add language, tone and attitude towards public figures one year before and after death to see if the study would come to a different conclusion.

To conclude, the researchers found that the largest post-mortem boost in English-language media attention can be described as an anglophone of any gender who was already well-known before death and died a young and unnatural death. So, try and get famous before you die if you want to be remembered for a long time!

And if you are interested in ways to avoid dying prematurely and gaining some time to become famous, consider finding more ways to live longer and attending the 8th Aging Research and Drug Discovery conference organized by University of Copenhagen and Columbia University. I am sure that one way to become famous in late life is to set a longevity record, currently held by Jeanne Calment (122.5).

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The mourner’s Kaddish

— A prayer for the living

By Moshe Meirovich

In the words of Ben Sira, the second century B.C.E. Jewish apocryphal sage: “We are all destined to die. We share it with all who have ever lived and all who will ever be.”

This is a fact of life. Yet, with each death we enter a mourning period that Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (1926-2004) has so eloquently described as five stages of grief:

  • Denial;
  • Anger;
  • Bargaining;
  • Depression;
  • Acceptance.

Likewise, rabbinic scholars centuries ago comprehended the need to ‘concretize the abstract’ by embracing the grieving process even while standing at the grave of a loved one.

At the very moment when the heart is broken, Judaism mandates the public recitation of the Kaddish prayer thereby aiding the mourner to begin to move beyond denial by confronting death head-on.

The Kaddish, at this time of emotional upheaval, ever so slowly addresses the grieving process by encouraging the mourner to begin to accept a new reality with the ubiquitous reminder: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and helps those who are crushed in spirit.” (Psalm 34:19)

In the ancient Aramaic prayer, the Kaddish asserts: “Yitgadal V’yitkadash Shmei Rabbah.” Magnified and sanctified be the great name of God throughout the world created according to the divine will.

These words underscore the words of the prophet Isaiah: “For My plans are not your plans, nor are My ways your ways declares the Lord. But, as the heavens are high above the earth, so are My ways high above your ways and My plans above your plans.” (Isaiah 55: 8-9)

Poignantly, the psalmist reminds us that even though we may not comprehend God’s inscrutable will, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no harm for Thou art with me.” (Psalm 23:4)

Hence, with the recitation of the Kaddish, the mourner publicly declares there is indeed hope and redemption beyond this moment of unbearable pain. Step by step, the Kaddish provides the mourner with a ritual to traverse the stages of grief that will surely follow while embraced by a community of family and friends who provide comfort in the house of Shiva (seven days) where Kaddish will be recited, thereby sustaining the mourners in their quest for healing.

Moreover, in the words of an anonymous author, we discover an additional purpose in reciting Kaddish: “… if there is one thing I beg you to take to heart, it is this: Say Kaddish after me, but not for me. Kaddish is the unique Jewish link that binds the generations of Israel. The grave hears not the Kaddish, but the speaker does, and the words will echo in your heart …” (“Jewish Reflections on Death” by Rabbi Jack Riemer)

Thus, the Kaddish not only connects one generation to another; it also ‘jump-starts’ the grieving process in the midst of a caring and loving community, so that the mourner can again begin to experience a measure of hope, even in moments of despair.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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A Requiem, Derailed by the Pandemic

Arrives When It’s Needed Most

Courtney Bryan’s Requiem, premiering Thursday after its original date was canceled last year, now follows a time of loss and upheaval.

By Joshua Barone

You’ve probably heard a story like this before. Courtney Bryan’s Requiem was set to premiere with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in late March 2020. In a time of incalculable loss, her music became part of another kind of casualty: the sounds that vanished from stages around the world.

Like many premieres originally planned for the past year, Bryan’s Requiem, written for the vocal quartet Quince Ensemble and members of the Chicago Symphony, was stranded in limbo. But through the orchestra’s turn to online programming and a season-ending series organized by Missy Mazzoli, its composer in residence, the piece was given a new date this week, when the latest episode of CSO Sessions lands on the streaming platform CSOtv.

Maybe it’s actually more fitting that the Requiem be released now, as the United States emerges from its worst days of the pandemic — over 600,000 deaths later — and the country celebrates its first federally recognized Juneteenth, a year after the emotional, nationwide peak of the Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd.

“I think about the loss in my own life, but I know that a lot of people have had a lot of losses during this time, due to Covid and other situations,” Bryan said in a recent interview. “So I’m really happy that this is the actual premiere.”

Bryan, who is based in and from New Orleans, is a composer and performer who deals in collaboration, with an open ear to traditions like jazz and gospel — and, occasionally, to topics around racial justice like Black Lives Matter. In “Sanctum” (2015), she wove live orchestral playing in with sounds including the voices of demonstrators in Ferguson, Mo. Her oratorio “Yet Unheard” (2016) commemorated the life of Sandra Bland.

Edwin Outwater leads the Quince Ensemble and members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the premiere performance of Bryan’s Requiem, now streaming.

Her Requiem was meant to be more abstract — haunted by contemporary tragedies, perhaps, but not explicitly tied to any one in particular. It draws from a broad range of inspirations, including death rituals from the Anglican Church, “The Tibetan Book of the Dead,” Neoshamanism’s death rite known as the “great death spiral” and New Orleans jazz funerals, as well as text from the Bible and the traditional Catholic Mass.

Its five movements — Bryan associates that number with life — begin with a gentle, a cappella harmony built from elemental “mmm” sounds before each of the four voices of the Quince singers begins to follow a unique line, with detours into half-sung Sprechstimme and percussive sibilance. The other instruments don’t enter until about seven and a half minutes in, when the clarinet and brasses offer a chorale-like interlude, mournful and dignified.

The Requiem is primarily a showcase for the Quince singers. They follow that instrumental passage with repetitions of the word “listen,” in different ways: The score instructs one to exclaim, and the others to plead, chant on pitch and whisper. A bass drum resounds, signaling the start of a dirge that includes a duet of simultaneous yet lonely melodies from the clarinet and trombone. By the end, after sadly beautiful word painting with the “Kyrie eleison” text and a clarinet solo of upward runs, Bryan arrives at a finale that is less restful and resolved than a traditional Requiem’s, but more cyclical, closing with the “mmm” vocalise that started the piece.

Bryan talked more about the work and its inspirations in the interview. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Was this commission specifically for a Requiem, or was that your choice?

It actually goes back to when I met Quince. I was really taken not only with their music and their voices, but also how they talked about music and the things that they cared about. We bonded, and then a year after that — about four years ago — we were talking, and I told them I would like to write an a cappella Requiem.

I grew up in an Anglican church and was deciding between the Catholic Mass and the Anglican Mass, and thinking of writing a Requiem, but in my own style. As I got into it, I started reading about different dying rituals from traditions around the world, how people approach funerals and the celebration of life. Then I took a pause, because it got really big. There was a lot to learn, and it was changing the way I approached it — and because we didn’t have a specific deadline, I stepped down.

Later, I heard from Missy Mazzoli about a commission at the Chicago Symphony, and I knew that Quince was on the program. So I changed it. The first section is still a cappella, but then I added instruments.

Even with more musicians, it’s still far from the scale of something like Verdi’s Requiem.

It was already going to be chamber size. But yeah, I ended up going kind of minimal with the way I used the instruments. I checked out classic Requiems, definitely Verdi’s and Mozart’s, and the feeling I got — or even just from reading the Catholic Mass — was this feeling of rising up against death. It feels like there’s a battle or a triumph, and I found that I was most interested in thinking about death and the cyclical nature of life and death, and more, kind of, an acceptance. So all my text was Christian, but it’s my perspective on the Requiem.

I was about to say, there’s a tension at the end of your piece, between triumphant language like “Death will be no more” and music that’s more unsettled and mysterious.

It felt like a natural ending because it’s a life cycle; it wasn’t a triumph or an arrival point. And with the text, “The first things have passed away,” I thought it was something that was not an ending or a beginning.

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Performed by the Quince Ensemble with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Edwin Outwater, conductor.

When you were exploring traditions of mourning, what did you find yourself attracted to, conceptually and artistically?

The one that hit home the most is just thinking about New Orleans — the idea of the celebration of life and the jazz funeral. There’s the walking of the casket from the church to the burial ground, but there’s a whole ceremony in a jazz funeral that starts with the dirge, and then it goes up-tempo to a celebration of life. So that was a major influence on the instruments that I chose: the brass band or the New Orleans ensemble. I wasn’t trying to replicate the style, necessarily, but there are little symbolic things.

What do you make of the context of this Requiem’s premiere, as opposed to spring last year?

I know some commissions come in response to this historic thing, and you have your own take, but this was something that I just wanted to do. That’s why it’s interesting that it took its own time and that the actual premiere is after this really profound time of loss. I find these kinds of things mysterious, how they happen. So, I hear it differently. It sort of came out of some of the work I was already doing, where I was writing music about police brutality. I wouldn’t say this piece is about that; it was a chance for me to go in deeper into these ideas about life and death.

Quince asked, in the middle of the rougher parts of the pandemic, how I would feel if they just recorded the first, a cappella part and put it online for people — just something to share. The folks at the Chicago Symphony were very supportive of that, so we did. It felt good to have something like that to offer, and I feel the same way as it is being offered now. I hope it will be healing to people.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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This is what ‘tree burials’ are like in Japan due to lack of space in cemeteries

by

The families place the ashes on the ground, and plant an endemic species, forming forests in memory of the deceased.

Funeral rituals have accompanied human beings since they have notion of self. The earliest recorded burial is in Kenya, dating back 78,000 years. It is one of the oldest indications we have of a transcendence-oriented thinking: to the possibility that there is something beyond our earthly understanding.

With the advance of urbanization, and the apparently irreversible trend of population growth on the planet, the spaces to deposit the organic remains of the people has been compromised. We no longer fit. Given the situation, burials in Japan have had to take a new direction, which affects less the environment and appeals to a contemplative sense of eternal rest.

Rest in the shade of a tree

Natasha Mikles has dedicated her life to exploring the alternatives that exist to face death in the world. With the climate emergency in tow, the expert in philosophy from the University of Texas considers that the appropriation of physical land in favor of funeral practices it is simply no longer an option.

In recent years, Mikles has focused his study on Buddhist funeral rituals and narratives about the afterlife. In these Asian traditions, death is not understood as an end point. Rather, it is one more phase of the wheel of karma, and a step forward in the path to enlightenment.

Many times, however, the author acknowledges that “environmental needs collide with religious beliefs“, As detailed in his most recent publication for The Conversation. Rest perpetually under the shade of a tree in a public green area it could be an option, as is being seen in burials in Japan today.

A new way to face death

burials in Japan

It is not the first time that burials in Japan have been practiced in this way. Since the 1970s, there has been a record of Japanese public officials fearing for the lack of funeral space for the population, particularly in urban areas. The problem deepened in the 1990s, when more serious alternatives began to be implemented throughout the island.

It was then that Jumokusō was thought of, which translates into Spanish as “tree burials.” In these, the families place the ashes on the ground, and plant an endemic species on site to mark its final resting space. In this way, instead of building more cemeteries, entire forests would be planted in memory of the deceased.

This principle leans from the Shinto tradition, which finds value in all the vital manifestations of the universe. For this reason, the spaces dedicated to this type of funeral rites are considered sacred: there is an intrinsic spiritual value in life that ends to make way for a new.

We suggest: Natural organic reduction: this is what ecological burials are like that turn your body into human compost

Do burials in Japan of this type interfere with traditional practices?

burials in Japan

Many of the families that have implemented this strategy of sacred greening of public spaces they don’t even practice Shintoism, or are affiliated with a specific religious tradition. However, the interest in continuing this type of practice denotes a environmental responsibility extended throughout the population.

Despite this, these burials in Japan also obey an ancient Buddhist principle. Like the plants are considered sentient beings, it is a way to continue the reincarnation cycle for the soul that departed. Seeds embody a living component of this path, and therefore, they must protect themselves with the same honor.

The practice has been so well received that various temples and public cemeteries have adopted it as part of their agenda today. The model has been so successful that some Religious spaces promote it as part of the spiritual life of people. Although they do not necessarily align with the ancient practices originally proposed by Buddhism, they do obey the precept of respect for existing forms of life, which sets the standard for all branches of this spiritual tradition.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Dr. Ruth talked about sex in the 1980s. Now it’s time to talk about death

‘The pandemic has waved death in our face. Mortality is now at the forefront’

Karen Hendrickson and Jo-Anne Haun founded the Death Doula Network of BC, an online community devoted to the death positive movement operating out of their homes in B.C in April, 2020. They started the network to help people dealing with grief during the pandemic

By

Only Karen Hendrickson and Jo-Anne Haun, co-founders of Death Doula Network of BC (DDNBC), can approach the topic of death with the perfect balance of positivity, passion, and of course, dark humour.

“Back in the 1980s, Dr. Ruth talked about sex,” Haun said in a Zoom interview from B.C. “She brought education and humour to it and now our children are learning about it in schools. That’s what we would like to do with death.”

Commonly associated with births, doulas offer physical and emotional support. They often handle administration and act as a go-between for patients and medical staff to minimize stress for patients and their families.

But doulas also play a role in end of life. “Death doulas” not only fill the gaps between patients and the health-care system, but also bridge the gap between the health-care and funeral industry. Their work has become particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has isolated dying patients, interrupted death rituals and placed extra stress on families.

Hendrickson and Haun, who have been friends for 20 years, became death doulas together back in 2018. They founded the virtual group to start a discussion around death and dying for anyone interested in the death-positive movement.

DDNBC has grown quickly and continuously since their first virtual meeting in April 2020. The network now has close to 140 members throughout Canada and around the world.

Karen Hendrickson and Jo-Anne live four hours apart and saw the opportunity to work together to create the virtual network DDNBC, during the pandemic, April 2020.

Gaps in the health-care system

Hendrickson and Haun have been part of the fight to include doulas within the health-care system to help fill some of the gaps between the system as its patients.

“You have likely heard of the rock metaphor before. Basically, The big rocks are the diagnoses. The medium rocks are your support people. The small rocks are your treatments. The sand in between the rocks is the doula,” Hendrickson said.

Things like confusing paperwork, new medical teams, and unfamiliar systems have a devastating emotional impact on patients and their families.

Hendrickson described an instance where a young patient with terminal cancer kept having to renew his burial permit but the medical staff continued to insist that it wasn’t important. That form is required by funeral services to take the person’s body from their home. Without an up-to-date form, the funeral service would refuse to take the body and the family would have to call the police.

“They would arrive with their sirens on and everything, and be forced to treat it like a crime scene because that’s their mandate,” Hendrickson said. “Imagine grieving families having to witness that.”

Ingrid Ollquist, based in Los Angeles, started as a birth doula in 2017, mainly supporting people through abortions and miscarriages. She decided to become a pre-planning and post-death doula after receiving emotional support from a doula mentorship program herself.

After a 10-year battle, Ollquist lost her mother to multiple sclerosis (MS). During this process, she was in and out of hospitals dealing with lots of administration with little support. As a death doula, she hopes to prevent others from experiencing this stress and isolation.

“It brought distance between my mom and I,” Ollquist said. “It was so frustrating to just live in logistical spaces with a person that you love that you can see dying in front of you.”

Ollquist is now the founder of the free grief support group Nurture Ing after being mentored by Jill Schock, the founder of Death Doula LA (DDLA).

COVID-19 has changed how we die

COVID-19 has made the gaps between health-care and funeral industries larger. Government regulations restrict patients from having more than one support person when in a hospital.

For death doulas, these restrictions mean patients die without their loved ones by their side. Doulas and family members must connect with the dying patient virtually.

“A COVID death is horrific. It’s the worst. You are losing more than just life, but all end-of-life rituals,” Ollquist said.

Many memorial and funeral events have been cancelled, and burial and cremation services have been substantially delayed.

Olliquist hasn’t personally dealt with more clients but she has played a larger role in supporting other doulas. She says that many doulas are now experiencing death anxiety after witnessing numerous horrific deaths all over the world. People of all different ages are dying without family and without rituals.

DDNBC and Ollquist suspect that more people are going to be thinking about (and planning for) their deaths after the pandemic.

“The pandemic has waved death in our face. Mortality is now at the forefront,” Haun said.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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What to Expect When Death Comes

In the wake of Covid-19, we are all grieving. How can we come to terms with death — and what does it teach us about living?

By Brandy L Schillace

In 2015, I published a book. It began like this:

“A wake,” my mother said. “To sit with the dead.”

We were on our way to West Virginia, to an unremarkable two-story colonial where my grandfather’s remains had been washed and laid out for viewing. It had been raining all night, but apparently no one in this homey funeral parlor had been sleeping. They’d been sitting up with the body. Sitting up — with the body — all night.

There are no good adjectives to describe my feelings about this. I was seventeen and grieving, but I wasn’t horrified. Shocked, yes, but the idea was strangely enticing, even fascinating. Really? We do that? This wasn’t my first family death, after all, but it was the first time I’d encountered the intimacy of this ritual.

It was also the first time I’d considered the buzzing activity that surrounds the newly dead. I asked myself what seemed like suddenly obvious questions — Why wash a body before putting it in the dirt? Why sit awake with someone now permanently asleep? Even the practice of embalming the body (which prevents decay) before interring it in the ground (where it is supposed to decay) struck me as a very strange kind of ritual. With only a minor leap of morbid imagination, care of the newly dead began to resemble care of the newly born. But it also brings us face to face with our own mortality.

When we witness death, we must grapple with its finality, but also with the knowledge that one day we, too, must die. Where once this was understood as the natural order of things, we now find ourselves conflicted and less willing to see death as “natural.” If anything, death breaks into our lives as an unexpected surprise.

We are not used to death and dying in the West, and most particularly not in the modern United States. The Victorians (in the U.S. and U.K.) had incredibly complex mourning rituals, including mourning jewelry, photographs of the recently dead (momento mori photography), and the public wearing of mourning clothing.

Like birth, death was a social event that drew communities together. In a large city, scarcely a day would go by without some visible sign of bereavement. Compare this with our modern standards, where illness and death are either hidden away in hospitals or sensationalized through popular culture, and where prolonged grief is likely to be medicated as abnormal, rather than openly acknowledged as an inevitable part of life.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss American psychiatrist, developed her theory of the five stages of grief in 1969 as a response to a lack of information on death and dying in the curriculum of medical schools — but even these hardly cover the enormous range of emotions that accompany death, and they certainly weren’t a plan for how better to go about the process of grieving. Later attempts at death positive education have been on the rise, but can be blind to the way privilege often determines “positivity” about death.

Then, in 2020, the pandemic descended upon us with death tolls on a global scale. We crashed into a set of experiences most were ill-prepared to deal with — and on top of this, the nature of the virus stole away even our usual means of communal grieving. Covid-19 has precipitated three separate types of loss; first, the loss of loved ones, of friends, of connections we always assumed would be there. Second, the loss of personal contact so much a part of grieving. And third, and perhaps most jarring: the loss of an illusion. We’ve been stripped of the comfortable idea that we could plan for tomorrow, or that we will all die of comfortable old age.

Death has come. And we were not expecting it.

Looking out at the expanse of still-spiking cases in the U.K. and parts of the U.S., overwhelmed crematoriums in India, and the struggle to get higher percentages vaccinated, it’s clear that the first crisis isn’t necessarily over. But a second epidemic is coming: a shadow epidemic of psychological grief as we try to fit puzzle pieces of broken yesterdays to almost-tomorrows. We need help. So: what next?

I think it’s time for a journey. In Death’s Summer Coat, I worked backward through history, and sideways into other cultural contexts, to see how we got to “now.” Along the way, I learned how we might find paths to something better. I’ve decided to revisit those paths from a post-outbreak perspective, in hopes it might shed light on the road ahead. I hope you will join me. Sharing our stories provides hope and community so that none of us face death alone in the silent dark.

If you would like to hear a bit more from me, I gave a brief chat on the topic for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland. Until next time, go gently with yourselves.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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What matters in the end?

Couple chronicles life’s final chapter in new book

Photo of Irvin and Marilyn Yalom in the entry hall of their Palo Alto home.

Authors Irvin and Marilyn Yalom probe questions around love, loss

by Chris Kenrick

Is it possible to plan a “good death?” Can one gracefully leave this world to the next generation? Can one live meaningfully until the very end?

Prompted by a serious medical diagnosis, longtime Palo Alto residents Irvin and Marilyn Yalom probe these questions in “A Matter of Death and Life,” which the duo wrote just before Marilyn died by medically assisted suicide in 2019.

Married 65 years, both Yaloms already were widely published authors — translated into many languages — when they began writing their book in spring 2019 after Marilyn was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells.

Irvin, a psychiatrist and leader in the field of existential psychotherapy, had some 20 fiction and nonfiction titles to his name. Marilyn, a cultural historian, French professor and early director of Stanford’s Center for Research on Women, had published at least 10 books.

With her prognosis bleak, Marilyn persuaded her husband that they should document, in alternating chapters, the experience of her illness and likely demise from the disease.

“We now live each day with the knowledge that our time together is limited and exceedingly precious,” the two, both in their late 80s, write in the preface. “This book is meant, first and foremost, to help us navigate the end of life.”

As scholars, both Yaloms are steeped in the great philosophers’ contemplations on exemplary life and death, and have wrestled in their own work with themes of mortality.

In “American Resting Place,” co-authored with their son, the photographer Reid Yalom, Marilyn documented how 400 years of gravestones, graveyards and burial practices reflect changing American ideas about death, class, gender and immigration.

As a psychotherapist, Irv had counseled countless patients, including many with terminal illnesses, about facing death, and written extensively about their — and his own — death anxieties.

“Of all the ideas I’ve employed to comfort patients dreading death, none has been more powerful than the idea of living a regret-free life,” Irv recalls in the book.

Sitting together in their yard, admiring the trees, “Marilyn squeezes my hand and says, ‘Irv, there’s nothing I would change,'” he writes. With four children, eight grandchildren and extensive world travels in addition to their professional accomplishments, both Yaloms feel they’ve seized their days to the fullest.

Even as death approaches, the pair celebrate “magic moments,” such as the evening they abandon television and Marilyn pulls “Martin Chuzzlewit” down from the bookshelf and begins reading aloud. “I purr in ecstasy, listening to each word,” Irv writes. “This is sheer heaven: What a blessing to have a wife who delights in reading Dickens’s prose out loud.” He recalls the day — more than 70 years before — when the two had first bonded over their mutual love of books as classmates at Roosevelt High School in Washington, D.C.

When chemotherapy fails and Marilyn is placed on immunoglobulin therapy, she begins inquiring about medically assisted suicide — legal in California since 2016 — in the event the new treatment does not work.

Irv is horrified, but Marilyn is at peace. Though sad to leave the people she loves, “The idea of death does not frighten me,” she writes. “I can accept the idea that I shall no longer exist. … After 10 months of feeling awful most of the time, it’s a relief to know that my misery will come to an end.”

After some weeks the couple is told the immunoglobulin therapy, too, has failed.

Marilyn accepts various tributes and goes about saying her goodbye, and giving away her treasured books to a large network of friends and colleagues. “It’s weird to realize that if I want to do anything, I’ll have to do it quickly,” she writes.

Ultimately, about a week before Thanksgiving 2019, she chooses to end her life, ingesting lethal medication in the presence of Irv, their four children, a physician and a nurse. (She was among the 405 people to use California’s End of Life Options Act in 2019, according to the annual tally from the state health department.)

Shortly before, Marilyn had reviewed the writings of Greek and Roman philosophers on how to live and die well. “For all the philosophical treatises and all the assurances of the medical profession,” she writes, “there is no cure for the simple fact that we must leave each other.”

The final chapters are written by Irv, recounting the agony of grief and his halting attempts to resume some kind of normal life — including venturing out to a Barron Park Senior Lunch at the Corner Bakery.

After more than 70 years with Marilyn beside him, he struggles with the idea that “something can have value, interest and importance even if I am the only one to experience it, even if there’s no Marilyn to share it with.

“It’s as if Marilyn’s knowing about a happening is necessary to make it truly real,” he writes.

He rails at the irrationality of this. “I’ve been a full-time student, observer and healer of the mind for over 60 years, and it is difficult to tolerate my own mind being so irrational,” he writes.

Reached at his home in late May, two months after the book’s publication, Yalom said he’s been busy with the “strong feedback,” including virtual book talks with large audiences all over the world. The book is licensed for publication in 25 countries, some already in print and others likely between now and the end of next year, according to literary agent Sandra Dijkstra.

Yalom, who turns 90 this month, continues to work on his next book and also to do single-hour therapy consultations.

“I’m growing old now and my memory’s beginning to disappear,” he said. “I’m not seeing ongoing patients anymore but I think I’m able to do a lot for some people just in the single hour.”

His new book is intended as a training manual for young therapists. “I’m always writing, and as long as I’m writing I feel very well,” he said.

He also takes walks daily to a nearby park, where he’s had a bench installed in memory of Marilyn. Yalom said he enjoys sitting on the bench, taking in the surroundings and thinking of her.

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