After David Bowie released a video about his cancer death, I realized that two members of my support group had been conducting tutorials on dying with me. Their teaching styles differed, as did the content…

As I begin to tell my friends and family about the seven days you treated my wife, Laura Levis, in what turned out to be the last days of her young life, they stop me at about the 15th name that I recall. The list includes the doctors, nurses, respiratory specialists, social workers, even cleaning staff members who cared for her…

A terminal illness can be devastating for an entire family, with relatives often forced to make decisions about a loved one’s care if the patient is no longer able to do so. If the patient has…

Americans have long been chided as the only people on earth who believe death is optional. But the quip is losing its premise. A recent profusion of personal narratives, best-selling books and social entrepreneurs’ projects…

Two organizations are unifying in an effort to change the way Americans approach advance care planning. In a survey conducted by The Conversation Project in 2012, 90 percent of respondents said they believe it is important to discuss their end-of-life care wishes. Yet, that same survey also found that only 30 percent of those individuals are actually having the conversations.

In the end, the personal was political. What brought the 78-year-old California governor and former Jesuit seminarian to sign the law that will allow doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients was thinking…