In the San Francisco Chronicle, the writer Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff gives an account of exactly what happened when her 90-year-old father died, after willing his body to science.
Normally, those who give their bodies to universities or labs get a freebie on checking out. Some funeral director gets paid by the university to transport the corpse; and the university, [...]
No, this will not be a blog about Michael Jackson, or how he died. Or whose fault it was. And it’s also not about whether Jackson should be buried, for old time’s sake, on the very spot where he seduced small boys.
I leave it to Randy Cohen, the ethicist of the New York Times, to worry [...]
You know there’s a new administration around, when legislators start thinking ahead. Sen. Mark Warner has been thinking way ahead. He’s proposed legislation that will vastly enhance end-of-life care. He calls it The Advanced Illness Care Management Benefit — and the idea is to stick it in the Medicare Package, which makes perfect sense.
Translated, it [...]
Here’s something for those of you who want to save a few dollars in these harsh economic times — particularly when you’re dead:
The San Diego chapter of the Funeral Consumers Alliance (www.funerals.org ) has done a terrific in-depth job of comparing prices among various funeral homes.
Don’t want to pay $5,000 for a casket? Or ridiculous [...]
The state of Washington has just followed in the footsteps of its neighbor Oregon: If you happen to be a resident, over 18, and terminally ill you may, under certain circumstances, shorten your own life. That’s the new law.
In fact Linda Fleming, a 66-year-old with terminal pancreatic cancer, did just that in late May.
Fleming followed [...]
Dear Readers:
Jeanne Frye is a longtime hospice nurse of uncommon experience, intelligence and compassion. About 40 times in the past year, readers have emailed me, asking how to deliver the bad news — word of impending death — to someone they love. Here’s Jeanne’s brilliant and thoughtful reply:
“No one wants to be the bearer of bad [...]
How do you make certain your last wishes about how — and where– you want your funeral and burial to be conducted are implemented? How to make sure no one spends a fortune (or at least not more than you’ve planned) for the ceremony? And that everyone you love knows where you’ve stashed the cash [...]
Do you have to buy a hideous coffin for a dead relative? Or for that matter any coffin?
“The funeral industry does a great job of having you believe their requirements are the same as state laws,” my friend Jane Hillhouse, the founder of both Colorful Coffins and Final Footprints (www.finalfootprints.com ) tells me. “The only requirement [...]
I have to be honest: there are about 8 million things, maybe more, I’d rather do than handle a corpse — especially if it happens to be the deceased version of someone I really like(d).
Also, and I’m sorry to go into this but I did once take a home funeral class (anything for a blog…) so I [...]
There are a lot of completely false assumptions about hospice care in America . For instance not a week goes by that I don’t get an email from someone wanting to know if his grandfather (or mother or sister) should “enter” a hospice. Or “go to a hospice” and “be registered there”.
Actually almost all hospice [...]
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Posted on January 24th, 2009