Tag: dying

Five years after her mother’s death, while still grieving and suddenly middle-aged, Abby Mims turns to beauty products to cure what ails her.

“Drink was destroying my life. Tobacco only shortens it, with the best parts over anyway.”

Karen Brown recalls the pain and joy of fulfilling a deathbed promise.

Carolita Johnson considers the emotional and physical labor required of women as their loved ones die.

Cameron Dezen Hammon reflects on her frustrations as a Christian music minister for the terminally ill, unable to heal a cancer patient she cared for, and struggling to be compassionate at her belligerent Jewish father’s bedside.

After the death of her dog, Katie Gutierrez grapples with the ripple effects of her decisions — and how to live with uncertainty as a mother.

As Anne Liu Kellor says goodbye to her Chinese grandmother in the hospital, she taps into buried memories and family trauma.

Melissa Berman recalls what was said, and not said, between her and her beloved aunt as they approached her final year.

Kate Walter went to Woodstock in 1969 with her boyfriend. She went back in 1994 with her girlfriend. She’s not going back again.

Amy Scheiner reflects on her mother’s sudden death and what it means to be a woman in a world that is set up to bury them.

While under the influence of Valium, Scott Korb reflects on all the fathers he could have been and the father he has become.

When her grandfather died, Abigail Rasminsky learned about a part of his life she’d known nothing about.

Matthew Salesses considers the impact of his wife’s passing, and other factors, on his experience as a human passing through the fourth dimension.

Grace Loh Prasad realizes that mourning is complicated when home and homeland aren’t the same place.

Grieving the mysterious death of her father, Susanna Space seeks refuge in the study of meteors.

Michael Gonzales reflects on the deaths of a dear friend, and a bookworm he idolized: David Bowie.

Yvonne Conza wrestles with the complexities of estrangement from her dying — complicated — dad.

At Oxford American, Michael Graff remembers his dad, Carl.

After his death, Emily Urquhart ‘sees’ her brother with regularity. Nearly 20 years later, stories and science help to explain why.

Carolita Johnson tallies the costs and benefits of love and cohabitation as a woman artist living in a patriarchy.

On the lowest paid, but perhaps most rewarding job at The California Medical Facility — a medium-security prison in Vacaville, CA.

Ken Otterbourg contemplates love and loss and what we remember when we try to forget.

Sometimes death takes a torturously slow, scenic route.

Jacqueline Dooley recalls her difficult transition from being a mother with earthly duties, to becoming one with more spiritual concerns for a teenage daughter with terminal cancer.

After a series of losses, Lillian Slugocki tries to make sense of death — and life in the wake of others’ passing.

“What they are doing is profiting from the sale of humans.”

A series of losses prompts s.e. smith to wonder why, if it’s inevitable, we tend to view death as failure.

To help demystify dying, Cory Taylor answers questions about what it’s like to have a terminal illness.

With the onset of death doulas, no one need die alone.

Ironically, it was this desire to be close to the dead that ultimately helped usher bodies out of the home. Embalming—which advanced as a science around the same time as the Civil War—allowed for the corpses of men who had died on far-off battlefields to return home for some semblance of the Good Death. “Families […]