A thick blanket of old smoke hangs over everything, almost like its own entity in this house.  Yet it’s just me, on my hands and knees wedged between the wall and the bed, trying to…

It can be difficult to deal with issues of mortality. Most people prefer to avoid the topic until forced to deal with it. However, I have found that, as difficult as dealing with our mortality…

Despite knowing that it is coming every day of our lives, too many of us are unprepared for our own death.  We pursue tests, treatments and interventions until suddenly (or so it seems), we hear…

At 26, I sat with my father on the thin nursing home mattress he’d been assigned to two weeks earlier. A nurse, round-faced and glistening with sweat, whirled into the room presenting a tray of…

I am born into a multigenerational household and my grandparents practically raised me. My grandfather used to pick and drop me at my school for most part of my school life. On our way to…

The palliative nurse told us what our doctor could not. “I think of time in terms of years, months, weeks,” he began pulling his chair close so that his knees almost touched my husbands who…