Leaning Into Sharp Points: Practical Guidance and Nurturing Support for Caregivers-Introduction (excerpt)
“How do I do this?” he said. His wife was just enrolled in hospice. “We’ve been married for 40 years, but God help me, I don’t know what I should be doing.” It was my first visit and the question was unexpected. It’s a question asked by millions of people every day when they anticipate or find themselves thrust into the role of caregiver for a loved one who is dying. Their...
Read MoreChariots of Conscience
I stepped aboard the chartered bus and sat in a comfortable reclining cloth seat with a pull-down footrest. It looked no different than thousands of other Greyhound buses in the 1960’s. A gleaming silver box with sleek greyhounds painted on both sides that soon would be driven by a driver who was greeting entering passengers with a smile. What I didn’t realize was in twenty-five minutes, this bus would begin a journey that would change the lives of its passengers and the soul of the country.
Read MoreIt’s Not Our Fault
When Christians in the Middle Ages extolled the virtue of holy missions and heard that Crusaders killed innocent Muslims, they cried out “It’s not our fault.” When Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer murdered 1500 unarmed Indians, members of the House of Parliament, who had called them “children,” said It’s not our fault. When the people of Weimer who cursed the...
Read MorePlaying for Relatives: Understanding Buchenwald
I thought about my father’s family tree as I drove from Prague to Weimer. Thirty-three relatives had died in Auschwitz, three had been liberated from Dachau, but nothing was written about Buchenwald, the concentration camp I would visit the next day, November 11th, 2010. It was Veterans Day in the United States and Armistice Day in Europe. I stood just inside the entrance and looked at the sign...
Read MoreSubway Christmas Carols
It’s December and I just got off the C train at 53rd and 5th, when I see his arms flailing above the thousands of people ascending the stairs. He defiantly stands halfway up forcing everyone to move around him. Those closest try desperately to avoid brushing against his layers of soiled clothes. He’s in his sixties and wears a red elf’s hat that jumps skyward as he stretches upward, his...
Read MoreI’m in Shock! But It’s Nothing Personal
It was the type of conversation we’ve all heard, and then thought, “I’d never do that!” In a small restaurant north of San Francisco, I heard a woman loudly complaining to a friend about the ingratitude of a relative. “I just don’t understand it,” the woman said. “I tried to be helpful. You know, her husband is in critical condition, and she just about bit my head off when I...
Read MoreThe Good Death: Views of Academics and Trench Workers
The earliest reference I could find to “the elephant in the room” story was by the wonderful 12th Century Persian poet Rumi. He wrote about wise men in a darkened room trying to describe an elephant in it. Since they had never seen such an animal, their description would be based on what they touched or smelled. I felt I was transported into that room during a recent international conference on death and dying.
Read MoreThe Zen of Eating Cream of Wheat: A Journey Into Dementia
As a bedside hospice volunteer in San Francisco, I always have the choice of whether or not to accept an assignment. Some, I immediately know are right for me, such as sitting with a man my age who was estranged from his family and desperately wanted to reconnect with them. With others, especially those with advanced Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, I occasionally question whether the assignment makes sense—but not anymore.
Read More10 Suggestions for Living: Advice from a Tibetan Hermit and My Mother
In the 19th century, the hermit Patrul Rinpoche wrote, Be like a cow. Eat, defecate, and sleep. Everything else is none of your business. After almost 200 years, this easily understood philosophy of life has evolved into complex (and sometimes bizarre) thoughts, bloated by want-to-be gurus, espoused by television personalities, and shrouded in mysterious words such as “presence,”...
Read MoreThoughts as You Approach Your Own Death
How do we “know” something? How do we know anything? Our primary sources usually involve written documents or the spoken word, with information ranging from ludicrously false to probably true. Yet, most of the time, even the most “objective” information has a slight personal twist to it, placing a layer between it and us. What we know in these instances is what another source has said...
Read MoreChoosing How To Die. Does it Make a Difference?
If you could choose the way you will die, what would it be?” Many people cavalierly answer “old age” or “in my sleep,” as if either of these answers will offer relief from an event they’ll do almost anything to avoid thinking about. But for some of us, the answers have less latitude and little humor. We have a better idea than most people what will do us in. In my case, it will most...
Read MoreWhat Makes You Think You’ll Live Forever?
The opening line of the pamphlet was straightforward: Join us in a workshop where you will experience your own death. Six months prior, I would have thought it an interesting exercise. But having received a diagnosis of “aggressive prostate cancer,” it had the relevance of a guidebook for an upcoming trip.
Read MoreThe Zeniness of Aging
It began when I dropped a ceramic pie dish for no apparent reason. Expensive, but replaceable. Not a big deal I thought, just my new clumsy self. But the next day when I tripped going up the stairs and sprained my ankle, I questioned that it was clumsiness. And when I fell off my bicycle, again for no apparent reason and tore up the left side of my body, I became concerned—really concerned.
Read MoreTop 10 Insults for Old People
Incredible things are heard when nobody thinks you’re listening. Recently in downtown San Francisco I was walking behind a twenty-something–year-old couple. They were forced to reduce their fast pace as they approached an elderly man slowly walking in the same direction. Unable to go around him because foot traffic was heavy, they exchanged annoyed expressions, then imitated the elder gentleman’s halting movements.
Read MorePatient Choice: A Medical Cop-Out
It was an invitation that made no sense. I was asked to be a special guest of the South Korean Ministry of Tourism and KMI International, a company that markets medical tourism. Why me, I wondered? As I re-read the invitation, I remembered another strange offer I received in the 1970’s during a tense period in Israeli-Arab relations. “Hello Dr. Goldberg,” an official from the Jordan Ministry of Education had said. “We’d like to know if you would be interested in coming to Ramallah to conduct a seminar on stuttering therapy this summer.”
Read MoreBecoming Something Different
In Tibetan Buddhism the word “bardo” refers to a transition or a gap between the completion of one situation and the beginning of another. That gap can occur between life and death, ignorance and understanding, or in the case of speech-language pathology, between who we were and what we are becoming.
Read MoreDying the Way We Live
People who were dying in the Middle Ages said their goodbyes, gave away the furniture, and just stopped breathing. The non-event was witnessed by friends and family, who, at the moment of death absconded with anything of value. Later, they might gather to either celebrate or deride the person’s life. Today, although we rarely fight over furniture, we do something worse.
Read MoreUnderstanding Chronic and Terminal Illness: A Guide for Healthy People
A client who was dying once said to me, “Every day I feel as if I’m on one of those exercise boards that rest on a ball. Just when I steady the damn thing, it starts moving and I’m struggling again to balance myself. Why don’t people realize that’s what my life has become?”
Read MoreMemories: A Call to Reconnect
Did you ever have a memory that rode into your consciousness on the back of a passing odor, object, or random word? Something you desperately tried to forget? But despite your best efforts, it still seeped through your emotional protective wall as if the wall was made of cheesecloth.
Read MoreProstate Cancer Research Funding and Male Vanity
As someone who’s living with prostate cancer, I applauded Louis Gossett Jr.’s testimony in Congress on the importance of prostate cancer research funding. If congress was listening, maybe I’ll live long enough for something else to kill me. But according to the American Cancer Society statistics, I shouldn’t hold my breath.
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