Category: Death Education

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How to Cope with Anticipatory Grief and Ambiguous Loss

What to do when the person you are grieving is here but not here

By Cynthia Orange

[T]he longer we live and the more we experience, the more we find ourselves in the cracks between joy and contentment on one side of life’s continuum and grief and loss on the other. Children leave our nests, we move from vocations to avocations — from retirement to, as a dear friend puts it, “re-aspirement.” Addresses, relationships, bodies, even spouses, can change. More loved ones get more serious diagnoses. Sometimes we get dreaded medical test results ourselves.

When someone dies, the loss seems clear. But what about those times when grief is anticipatory — when the diagnosis is terminal and we grieve the inevitable? Or times when the loss is ambiguous? Perhaps a parent shows signs of dementia, a son or daughter in the military is missing in action or returns from combat with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) or a dear friend has a serious stroke. Maybe a loved one is in the throes of addiction. What was has changed, replaced by uncertainty.

When You Are Caught in ‘Frozen Grief’

University of Minnesota emeritus professor and family therapist Pauline Boss, author of Ambiguous Loss, calls this state of complicated loss “frozen grief.” A loved one might be physically present but psychologically absent, as in the case of Alzheimer’s or other mental disorders. Or he or she might be psychologically present (to us) but physically absent, as in the case of a child gone missing or a tragedy like 9/11 where many bodies were never recovered. More common situations like divorce, adoption or estrangement can also cause confusing feelings of ambiguous loss.

We are a society that doesn’t do well with ambiguity. We want clarity. We want steps to acceptance. We want closure — a concept that makes me want to tear my graying hair out! Grief is a messy process, and ambiguous loss even messier.

“My point is very different, that ambiguous loss is a complicated loss, which causes, therefore, complicated grief, but it is not pathological. . . it’s a pathological situation,” said Boss in a 2016 interview with Krista Tippett, host of Public Radio Exchange’s On Being.

Boss, and those in the therapeutic community who have embraced her ideas, give us permission to ride the waves of this type of loss without feeling pressured to “just move on,” as so many expect us to do. Instead of feeling alone in a state of “bewilderness,” we learn that the pangs of grief we have when someone is here — but not here — are normal.

Her Mom’s Wish

As I wrote in my recent book, Take Good Care: Finding Your Joy in Compassionate Caregiving, a woman in my caregivers’ group beautifully described how it feels to ride this sea of rolling emotions:

Mom was in a memory care facility but still willing and able to have us take her out for special occasions. After one Easter family dinner at my house, Mom thanked me for the nice meal, commented on our nice family, then said, “Do you know what I wish?” “What, Mom?” my sister and brother and I all asked. “At times like this, I really wish I had children.”

We are still able to laugh about that memory; sometimes with Alzheimer’s, that’s all you can do. Then you go off to another corner of grief and look for the cracks of light — she still responds to hands that hold and hugs that enfold. She still likes to sit outside and look at the flowers. So here we are. But we are so ready.

A friend of mine compared ambiguous loss to water. Water can run through your fingers, but it can also become ice, still and solid.

“Water, not water, yet water,” she said. Her words helped me deal with the flood of emotions that overwhelmed me when my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. “Dad, not dad, yet dad,” became my mantra before and after his death.

Your Unique Grief

As these anecdotes demonstrate, loss is as varied as the people who experience it, and we deal with it differently.

“The only expert on grief is the person experiencing a particular loss at a particular time. You,” writes Tom Ellis, a licensed marriage and family therapist and author of This Thing Called Grief. “Grief is so personally unique and changing that getting your mind and heart around it once and for all is impossible. Just when you reach a place of understanding, it changes again…. Despite this dilemma, there is value in gathering as much information as possible, in pulling together some tools to help.”

Tips for Coping

Here are some suggestions for people supporting someone, or those in the midst of their own ambiguous loss:

  • Don’t pressure yourself or others to “just move on.” As a therapist friend once told me, there is no closure for this type of grief — you just learn to carry it differently.
  • Be tender with yourself and try to take comfort in the knowledge that your feelings are normal. However, get the help of a qualified professional if your feelings overwhelm you to the degree they affect your ability to function or if you seek to escape them through addictive or harmful behaviors.
  • Seek support from family and friends who love, affirm and listen to you with open mind and ears and non-judgmental hearts.
  • Set and maintain appropriate and respectful boundaries. Although well intentioned, some caregivers tend to swoop in with answers or directives, when the best they can do is be with you in your ambiguity. As Ellis points out, “Loss is the problem, not you.”
  • Loss and grief can take their toll, so self-care is extremely important. Exercise, meditation, nature, journaling, play and laughter can all help. We each have different balance points and tipping points, but we can usually sense when things are out of balance.
  • Ask for, and accept, help when needed and offered. Let friends garden or clean for or with you. Let them take you to dinner or watch your children. So many caregivers have told me what a gift it is to do something to lift the burden or spirits of someone in need.
  • Make room for grief and loss, but try to take time each day to notice the beauty that surrounds us.

Each of our stories is unique, so the way in which we process loss will differ. But it is important to remember that we do not travel alone.

Complete Article HERE!

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Don’t Neglect the Softer Side of Your Estate Plan

Document and share your wishes for end-of-life care, the care of your pets, the disposition of your tangible assets, and more.

By Christine Benz

[A]s my family’s “first responder” and resident financial person, I served as power of attorney for my parents, as well as executor and trustee for both.

Their estate-planning documents attended to a lot of crucial issues: the distribution of their assets, the trusts that were to be set up upon each of their deaths, and their attitudes toward life-sustaining care.

Yet having gone through the process of seeing my parents through their last years and settling their estates, I’m struck by the number of “softer” decisions these documents didn’t cover–important topics like their attitudes toward receiving care in their home or in a facility, or whether they’d prefer to die at home or if a hospital was OK. Did I need to split up all of the physical assets equally among the children, or were they OK with me letting more stuff go to family members with a greater need for them?

Implicit in making someone an executor, trustee, or guardian, or delegating powers of attorney, is a statement that that you trust that person’s judgment to do what is best in various situations, including some of those outlined above. But I think it’s worthwhile to think through some of the softer, nonfinancial issues that could arise in your later years. Some of these issues, such as providing for the care of pets or getting specific about the disposition of your physical property, can be addressed with legally binding estate-planning documents. Other issues, such as how you’d like your loved ones to balance your care with their own quality of life, are best discussed with your loved ones and/or documented in writing on your own. (If you decide to leave physical or electronic documents that spell out your wishes on some of these matters, be sure to let your loved ones know how gain access to them.)

Attitudes Toward Guardianship
If you have minor children and have designated guardians to care for them if something should happen to you, you of course need to inform the guardians and make sure they’re OK with the responsibility. In addition, take the next step and communicate to your designated guardians about your priorities and values as a parent–your attitudes toward their education, spirituality, and financial matters, for example. And even if your children are grown–or getting there–it’s worthwhile to talk to close friends or family members about how you hope they’ll interact with your kids if you’re no longer around. After my sister lost a dear friend to cancer, for example, she and a group of other close friends serve as surrogate “moms” to their late friend’s daughter, now in her mid-20s. There’s no substitute for an actual mom, of course but it’s a relationship they all cherish, and they’re happy they discussed it with their friend before she passed away.

Attitudes Toward Life During Dementia
Given the increased incidence of dementia in the developed world, an outgrowth of longer life expectancies, it’s worth thinking through and communicating to your loved ones your attitudes toward your care and quality of life if you develop dementia. Would you prioritize in-home care above all else, or would care delivered in a facility be agreeable if it improved your spouse’s quality of life? Would you want your spouse or other loved ones to try to care for you themselves for as long as possible, or would you rather they delegated those responsibilities to paid caregivers, assuming the family finances could support it? How would you like your loved ones to balance your quality of life with their own? How would you like them to balance your health and safety with your own quality of life? How important would it be to you to receive daily visits from your spouse and other loved ones, even it meant that those obligations would detract from their ability to travel or pursue other activities? Would you prefer to keep your decline as private as possible, or would you rather be out in public interacting with people no matter what? There’s no “right” answer to any of these questions, but talking through them can help your loved ones be at peace with the decisions they could eventually make.

Attitudes Toward End-of-Life Care
I first became aware of The Conversation Project, designed by to help people discuss their own thoughts on end-of-life care, on NPR. In the segment, two adult daughters used “The Conversation” template to interview their elderly dad about the decisions they might eventually make on his behalf. Their father had drafted an advance directive that specified, rather strictly, that he didn’t want any life-sustaining care if he had no chance for a good quality of life. But one of the daughters asked whether it would be OK if they took a bit more time with the decision to let him go if it provided them with a sense of peace. Without skipping a beat, the dad said, “Oh, of course. Absolutely.” That conversation drove home the importance of adding nuance to the end-of-life discussion, above and beyond what could be provided by living wills or advance directives. You can read more about The Conversation Project and download a conversation starter kit here, but don’t feel bound by it. If there are important end-of-life issues that it doesn’t address, feel free to expand the discussion with your loved ones and/or commit them to writing.

Attitudes Toward Funerals, Burials, Etc.
Many people make plans for any funerals/memorials and the disposition of their bodies well in advance; the right approach to these issues may be predetermined by culture or religion. But for other people, attitudes toward these matters aren’t obvious at all, so it’s useful to spell out your wishes in advance, either verbally, in writing, or both. (My mother initially insisted that my dad would be buried rather than cremated, but even she was convinced that cremation was the right thing after we found three written statements from him about his desire to be cremated.) Maybe your wishes are simply to have your loved ones say goodbye in whatever way gives them the most peace at that time; in that case, tell them that or write that down.

Attitudes Toward Care of Pets
It’s a cliche to say that pets are like family members, but for many people, that’s absolutely the case. The good news is that you can actually lay the groundwork for continuing care for your pet as part of your estate plan. The gold standard, albeit one that entails costs to set up, is a pet trust; through such a trust, you detail which pets are covered, who you’d like to care for them and how, and leave an amount of money to cover the pet’s ongoing care. Alternatively, you can use a will to specify a caretaker for your pet and leave additional assets to that person to care for the pet; the downside of this arrangement is that the person who inherits those assets isn’t legally bound to use the money for the pet’s care. At a minimum, develop at least a verbally communicated plan for caretaking for your pet if you’re unable to do so–either on a short- or long-term basis. This fact sheet provides helpful tips to ensure for your pets’ continuous well-being.

Attitudes about Disposition of Personal Possessions
Are there specific physical assets you’d like to earmark for children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, or friends? If so, your estate-planning attorney can help you codify the disposition of those assets in your will so there’s no confusion. Also let your loved ones know if there are physical assets that you’d like to stay within the family (again, your will is the best way to do this). Importantly, you should also let them know what you don’t feel strongly about them selling or otherwise disposing of when you’re gone. Do you want your executor to take pains to divide the assets equally among your heirs so that everyone receives tangible property of similar value? The topic of dividing up tangible property among family members is a complicated one, to put it mildly; the more you say about your wishes in advance, the better off everyone will be in the end.

Complete Article HERE!

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The Brutal Truth Of Living With A Terminal Illness


Brought to you by Stop The Horror
Stop The Horror is a five-minute short film that confronts viewers with a harrowing retelling of the true events surrounding one man’s traumatic death.

by Sam Langford 

Kass Hall is a law student with a background in art and design; she lives with her husband and their pug called Elvis. She describes herself as a sister, a daughter, an aunty and a friend. 

She has been living with cancer for 27 years.

“I’m getting good at defying the odds, but I’ll never be in remission,” Kass says. “I’ll always be under my oncologist and surgeon’s eagle eyes, and I know that each hurdle, big or small, is a hurdle closer to the finish line.”

Impending death is not the kind of thing you adjust to. Despite the number of times she’s come close, Kass, now 39, is frank about being scared. She is under no illusions about what dying is like — she has seen “many, many friends, from children to older people, dying slowly and painfully.”

“I’ve been in the room in the final moments of life, and though we do our best to make people ‘comfortable’, it’s a situation I do not want to find myself in — for my own sake and that of those who love me,” she says.

She hopes that finish line isn’t soon. But in the event that it is, she wants a say in drawing that line.

This is how Kass has come to be an advocate for voluntary assisted dying legislation — her experience leaves her pretty uniquely placed to clap back at people opposed to it. With new assisted dying legislation proposed in Victoria at the moment, now is a particularly pressing time to persuade people of the bill’s importance.

“I have always liked the idea that, when I reach ‘my line’, I could choose to end my own pain. Watching someone you love die is one of the worst experiences a human can endure, and I imagine being the person dying is even worse.”

It’s an experience explored in the recently released film, Stop The Horror. A graphic five-minute short directed by Justin Kurzel, the film tells the true story of a man who dies over a period of three weeks, exploring what he and his family are forced to deal with.

Getting Diagnosed

Kass’s first diagnosis was in 1990, when she was twelve. The kind of cancer she has is incredibly rare, and was hard to pin down for a long time — as she wryly puts it, “what they thought it was then is not what they think it is now”.

That first diagnosis led to surgery and chemotherapy. On five separate occasions, her parents were called to the hospital to say goodbye. And yet, against all odds, Kass survived, though not without complications. “At that time I lost part of my stomach and duodenum [the first section of the small intestine],” she says. “The chemo left me infertile and with a heart condition, though thankfully my heart has remained strong.”

These complications have been multiplying steadily ever since. In 2000, Kass lost a kidney. In 2008, her thyroid. In 2011, the cancer returned to her stomach and liver. It was only in 2012 that her doctors discovered she had a genetic defect that was causing the tumours to return.

That was the moment, Kass says, when realisation hit. “This disease was — barring the unforeseen — what would kill me”.

Here’s the cruel thing about this genetic defect: in addition to all but guaranteeing the cancer’s return, it makes Kass ineligible for an organ transplant. And while so far it’s been possible to combat the resurgence of tumours with surgery, she’s keenly aware that things can’t continue this way forever.

“There’s going to come a time where surgery is no longer an option, and that’s when I start the slow process of dying.”

“The idea of dying anytime soon is not one I am comfortable with,” she says, “but who is, though?” She’s coming up on her 40th birthday in January, a milestone her oncologist has been telling her for years would be a “great outcome”.

Why Voluntary Assisted Dying Legislation Matters

Assisted dying has always been controversial, often for reasons Kass is keen to see us move past. Concerns about younger people — not children, but adults in their late teens and early twenties — having access to the option of assisted dying are, to Kass’s mind, utterly dismissive of terminally ill young people’s experience.

“There is no difference in older people and younger people making this decision,” she says. “If anything, for younger people the decision is harder because we think about what we may miss out on — weddings, children, travel.”

Kass says arguments that say young people with terminal illness don’t have the necessary perspective or clarity to decide to end their lives “seek to debase a person’s autonomy and thought process.”

“It’s designed to second guess a person. No one has the right to do that. Anyone who said that to me would probably not like the response they get from me.”

As for those who argue that choosing to die is a selfish act, Kass says her response “probably isn’t fit to print”.

“What I can say is that what other people think is not my problem. They are not living my life, they’re not walking in my shoes. Everyone has an opinion, but my life deals in facts. What others think about my choices, especially if they’ve never experienced my situation, is of zero consequence to me”.

Some of the most legitimate and important critiques of voluntary assisted dying legislation, though, come from people who have experienced Kass’s situation, or situations like it. These campaigns are run by people with terminal illness or life-threatening disabilities who are concerned that assisted dying legislation will needlessly kill many people through a subtle combination of pressures. Things like, for example, the feeling of being a burden on close family or medical services.

These are arguments Kass is willing to engage on — she says she’s aware of and understands the campaign in question, but thinks the legislation proposed by the Victorian Government includes adequate safeguards, including a multi-step process she hopes will catch any instance of family or external pressure.

“To my mind,” she says, “that is why patient autonomy is the key. At the end of the day, what family members think and what their needs are is not what this is about — it is and should always be about the primary patient. If the primary patient has not requested and been through the voluntary assisted dying process, then it shouldn’t be available.”

“And any family member that puts any pressure on a person who is dealing with illness or disability should find the map to hell and go there. There are so many people in the disability community and those with long term illness who have so much to contribute and who are outstanding members of society. Having an illness or disability doesn’t diminish us as people.”

Reaching The Finish Line

In Kass’s case, she knows her husband will support her decision if she reaches her line. She hopes that won’t be soon — she wants to grow old with her husband, see her nieces and nephews grow up, have a full legal career. For the time being, she’s optimistic.

But even on good days, the line is there, and Kass says that when she hits it, she has “no hesitations” about what she’ll do.

“I have no interest in suffering unnecessarily,” she says. “It will be my decision.”

“I respect that this won’t be for everyone. I just feel that a choice for those of us who do seek to end our own suffering should be given to us. We all have our own paths in life, and should have as much choice made available to us as possible.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Most Families Wait Too Long to Utilize Hospice Care

Researchers say elderly people are in hospice care for an average of only 12 days. Why aren’t they admitted sooner?

by Gigen Mammoser

[H]ospice centers provide valuable end-of-life care for the elderly.

So, why aren’t more people using these centers?

The Medicare hospice benefit (MHB) was established in 1982 in order to give recipients access to high-quality care near the end of their lives.

But, new research in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society states that those who utilize the service often do so too late.

The study included 562 individuals, all aged 70 and older with an average age of nearly 87 years.

Of these older adults, only 43 percent of them were admitted to hospice during their last year of life.

While hospice is available to individuals with six months or less to live, researchers found that for half of the study participants their duration of hospice care was less than 13 days.

The authors say underutilization of hospice care can create a burden for healthcare workers, and result in patient suffering.

Why don’t people utilize hospice?

The reason why hospice care isn’t used more frequently is complex.

According to statistics from 2000, only 23 percent of Medicare beneficiaries who died were in hospice care at the time.

The MHB was initially offered for those with end-stage cancer. However, more and people have begun seeking hospice care for noncancer-related ailments.

The problem is that other issues, such as frailty and dementia, may be harder to discern when determining an individual’s eligibility for hospice care.

“It is well documented that the prognostication [predictability] for those patients with a noncancer diagnosis is more difficult and is a complicating factor for physicians and others who refer patients to hospice care,” said John Mastrojohn, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO).

Lead study author, Dr. Thomas Gill, a professor of medicine at Yale University, agreed.

“Cancer tends to have the most predictable course,” he told Healthline, “meaning it is generally easier to predict when someone with cancer is in the last six months of life than someone with another terminal condition.”

“The challenge is even greater for older persons since many die from a combination of different conditions and/or debility, none of which may meet criteria for hospice,” Gill added.

That gets even more problematic when you look further at the results of Gill’s research:

The most common conditions leading to death were frailty and organ failure, not cancer. However, hospice acceptance rates for frailty were the lowest, and for cancer the highest.

Waiting too long

Not only is care jeopardized by condition, but by duration of stay as well.

The median of 12.5 days spent in hospice indicates that even when individuals do utilize the MHB, it is at the last possible moment.

“A large proportion were admitted shortly before they died, which makes it difficult for hospice to optimize its benefits,” said Gill.

Hospice care offers a unique opportunity to individuals who are near death in that it is not intended to cure them.

It is strictly palliative, meaning it is meant to provide comfort and quality of life.

Benefits of hospice care, Mastrojohn told Healthline, include expert pain management, spiritual support, as well as social and physical activities, tailored to the individual.

Hospice also provides service to families through bereavement support to help them deal with the loss of a loved one.

“Hospice is a benefit delivered by clinicians who are expert in the care of those with serious, advanced illness,” said Mastrojohn. “It is my hope individuals would be more open to receiving hospice services so they can maximize the many benefits they need and deserve.”

Changing how hospice is viewed

While this new research helps to highlight the underutilization of hospice care, it does not provide crystal clear answers why.

However, the authors hope that their work will lead to better strategies for addressing those who need hospice care, and getting them enrolled sooner in a program, rather than waiting until the last moment.

But hospice care also represents a difficult dilemma for families, which may help explain why duration of stay is so low.

For some, putting a loved one in hospice care can sometimes be seen as a sign of defeat.

“Some patients and/or families might interpret hospice as ‘giving up,’ but this is clearly not the case,” said Gill.

Complete Article HERE!

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Festival of Death and Dying explores topic Australians ignore

News headlines can feel like a catalogue of death and destruction, but are we really grappling with the reality of human mortality? The answer is no, according to a new festival.

Death and dying festival grapples with human reality

By Eloise Fuss and Lisa Skerrett

The Festival of Death and Dying wants us to stop focusing on our jobs, mortgages, children and relationships for a minute to consider life’s biggest unknown: death.

“We all live in a way as if we’re going to live forever,” said Festival of Death and Dying director Dr Peter Banki.

“To produce a cultural shift we need to do more than just talk about death and dying, I think we need to actively learn more about it, and even experience it in a certain way.”

The festival takes place in Melbourne this weekend after a successful debut in Sydney last year, with plans to also expand to Adelaide and Berlin.

Using art installations and immersive workshops, it hopes to provoke contemplation about how societies mark death and come to terms with the inevitable loss of friends and family.

“[Death] is probably the most difficult thing that any of us will ever have to do, and it’s probably the most important thing one can do for someone else — witnessing someone dying, accompanying them, and taking responsibility for their legacy and their memory,” Dr Banki said.

“You can’t experience death as such, so you need art — it helps us bear witness to it, even if it doesn’t save us from it.”

Mainstream Australia distanced from death

Before modern medical breakthroughs like vaccines and penicillin, it was more common to die at home, meaning most people had firsthand experience of human death.

Traditional funeral rites were also largely a family affair — a far cry from today’s funeral industry, which Dr Banki thinks has “commodified” the personal experience and expression of grief.

“We don’t see death, it’s hidden from us,” he said.

“You have a funeral and you might have a get together afterwards but that’s about it, there’s nothing within the culture that’s there or any type of ritual or ceremonial way to mourn our dead.”

One project helping people create ritual around death is a fashion designer making garments for the grave.

Pia Interlandi combines skills in fashion and funeral celebrancy, working with individuals and families to create bio-degradable clothing to be buried in.

“It neither denies nor flirts with death, but presents it in a way that invites observers to view it as natural, undeniable, inevitable and at times, beautiful,” said Ms Interlandi.

Rituals and mourning

Kopi hats, central to the mourning rituals of some Aboriginal cultures, represent the weight of a woman’s grief.

There is another older way of thinking about death close to home too: the complex mourning rituals of Australia’s Indigenous cultures.

Artist Maree Clarke builds an understanding of grief from an Indigenous cultural perspective, by guiding people through the experience of wearing Kopi mourning caps, or widow’s caps.

“In different areas some women would cut off their hair, weave a net of emu sinews, place it on their head and then plaster their head with gypsum, a very heavy river clay.

“They represented the weight of your grief, so the heavier it was, the bigger connection to the person that had passed.”

Dr Banki said mainstream Australia, which had “completely missed out on these ways of mourning”, had a lot to learn from Aboriginal cultures about dealing with death — and that getting “hands-on” helped in the process.

“There are other people in Australia also working to promote people to learn and have conversations about death and dying, but it’s always within the realm of speech and lectures and talks,” he said.

“We think deep learning happens when people feel something, when people experience something, and for that you have to get them to try on a garment or have to get them to try on a hat, or go into a coffin.”

Artist Maree Clarke builds an understanding of grief from an Indigenous cultural perspective by guiding people through making and wearing a Kopi mourning cap.

Complete Article HERE!

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Presentation talks mortality, being prepared

 

By Briana Alzola

[T]he death educator will be giving informational and interactive talks from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 19, and 1 to 3 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 27. Both talks will be the same so interested people should attend one or the other, Wagner said.

Wagner, a new Anacortes resident, has been working on death and bereavement counseling for years. In the 1970s, he was living in San Francisco and saw many of his friends sick and dying from AIDS.

Wagner, who was an ordained Catholic minister, looked into his background in theology and therapy and tried to find a way to help people who were dying or losing loved ones.

The people he was sitting with were dying in a matter of weeks, and he felt like he was just moving from one death scene to the next.

People were having to just figure out death on their own, he said. So he decided to set out to help people understand death as a part of life, rather than a punishment or something to be feared.

People who are aware of their mortality are able to live better lives, Wagner said. Talking about it in a group format also means people don’t have to deal with it alone.

Wagner started a support group as part of a 10-week program. People of all different backgrounds came in to talk and learn, he said. The program featured guest speakers to talk about spiritual concerns, legal concerns, estate planning and more.

The talks he’s offering in Anacortes are a condensed version of that program, which he also outlines in his book “The Amateur’s Guide to Death and Dying.”

His program ran for several years but he put it into book form to reach more people.

The book is set up as a support group, with fictional people talking about issues. All should be able to relate to what is being said, Wagner said.

“There is a place for them to fill in their own thoughts,” he said.

Death is not something people should be told how to feel about, he said. He just wants to open the discussion and give people the tools they need to be ready.

“Death is inevitable,” he said. “We have the opportunity to prepare.”

The talk at the center is aimed at elderly people and their family members. It will be fun, with a lot of humor involved, Wagner said.

The talk is a $15 suggested donation.

Complete Article HERE!

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Why being aware of your mortality can be good for you

It is only nothingness … for ever and ever.

By and

[N]obody likes to think about lying on their death bed. From health anxiety to midlife crises, it seems like thoughts about ageing and death can often unleash some level of neurosis. But is that the whole story? We have examined mortality awareness – the realisation that we are all one day going to die – and found that, although the prospect of death is often scary, it can also have positive effects.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, research on death awareness so far has focused largely on the negative aspects of realising that we will eventually stop living. Indeed, until now, the dominant psychological theory has been “terror management theory”, which assumes that contemplating our demise invokes fear and anxiety. For example, studies using this framework have found that thinking about death can make us more punitive and prejudiced.

However, throughout the years, literature from various fields has offered other explanations. For example, “positive psychology” proposes concepts such as “post-traumatic growth” – the idea that people can grow psychologically through traumatic experiences. Thinking about the fact that we will die may be hard, but according to this theory it could also help us to get stronger psychologically.

In our recent study, published in OMEGA – Journal of Death and Dying, we asked 356 participants from 18 to 80 years old questions about their experience of mortality. We asked them to indicate the extent to which they agreed with 89 statements which covered a wide variety of possible attitudes to death awareness. These included “I do not let the fear of dying rule my life”, “I want to be remembered for doing great things for the world when I am no longer alive” and “I am scared of dying before I am old”. In this way, we explored how many aspects of such awareness we could identify.

To see how the results might align with positive or negative features of their experience, we also asked our respondents about how interested they were in their health, how prone to taking risks they were, and how eager they were to conform (such as obeying rules).

Some of the attitudes we identified were negative. These included being fearful, feeling disempowered (realising personal vulnerability in the face of death), and feeling disengaged (refusing to acknowledge death). We found that those people who reported higher levels of disempowerment and disengagement also reported taking more risks and were more reluctant to conform. It may be that people who report taking greater risks do so because they feel that they will die regardless of what they do. Those refusing to conform on the other hand may be attempting to empower themselves in the face of the inevitable.

We also discovered that younger individuals and people with lower levels of education attainment were more likely to have negative attitudes to death. However, it is not all bad news for these individuals. For example, we found there was a relationship between mortality fearfulness and placing a high value on staying healthy. So it would appear that fearing death may cue attempts to control its unpredictability.

The power of legacy

Interestingly, we also found a few positive aspects of pondering mortality. One is accepting it rather than running away or fearing it, which can help us to make the most of our time-limited existence.

We also identified what we call mortality legacy awareness. This is a form of mortality awareness that drives the need to leave something behind after we have gone – thereby outliving and transcending death. This could be a highly creative force.

Having children can make us feel better about ageing and death.

The need for a legacy turned out to be an important contributor to dealing effectively with the prospect of demise, lessening feelings of hopelessness and a lack of purpose. In the study, legacy awareness was found to be correlated with both trying to be healthy and striving for spiritual growth (such as believing that life has purpose).

This suggests that those who are interested in passing down their succession to future generations as a way to transcend death are also likely to take responsibility for their health and place value on their internal development. Artists are the perfect example of this: through their creative legacies, they live on and are never totally gone. Working on leaving a legacy – whether it be producing art, raising a family, passing on family history or helping others – can also be a way for people to better tolerate ageing and face the prospect of death.

Such legacies also help those who remain to cope with their loss. On a more basic level, being aware of our ability to provide a legacy that outlives us can be an excellent way to motivate ourselves to accomplish more, stay healthy, focus on the here and now, and maintain good relationships.

Of course, the results are all based on correlations – we don’t show conclusively that striving for a legacy actually does make people feel more fulfilled. Our latest research project (currently under peer review for publication) has therefore studied 10 people’s experience of mortality awareness in depth – through one-to-one interviews. The outcomes of this work confirmed the findings from our first study and offer additional support to the claim that legacy awareness is a major element in people’s search for meaning – helping to manage death-related anxiety.

So the next time you face a haunting reminder of your death, remember that focusing on what you would like to leave behind could help you turn something terrifying into a positive motivational tool.

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