When We Accept What Is

my sweet sweet Andrea

there was a lesson

to be learned

by your loss

my little baby girl

who died in your isolette

as if it were a manger

and that is not to take for granted

who I have birthed into this world

your brother who came

a year later

upon whom I bestow

all of my devotion

breaking the cycle

of harm imposed

by abusive parents

generations of them

all that is required

of motherhood

you have taught me

is to love our offspring

shower them with care

be blessed in our sons and daughters

these are the gifts

scattered beneath tragedy

waiting to be found

when we accept what is

this gold filament of grief

Deborah Golden Alecson

September 16, 2014

I Can't Go On. I Must Go On"

The title is a phrase from Samuel Beckett that appears in Paul Kalanithi's essay in the NY Times Sunday Review (Sunday, January 24, 2014): "How Long Have I Got Left?"

Kalanithi, who recently completed a neurosurgical residency at Stanford Medical Center, is used to looking at CT scans of countless patients. What he's not used to, is looking at his own, but that's what he did last year. His CT scan showed that at age 36 and never having smoked a day in his life, he had stage four lung cancer. "When I first saw my scan, I thought I didn't have very long for this world," Dr. Kalanithi said.

This NY Times reflective piece will give you much to think about.

Graphic from NY Times Essay

Deborah Alecson Podcast

Deborah Golden Alecson, a faculty member in the Schools of Health Science and Nursing, discusses a September 2014 report issued by the Institute of Medicine called “Dying in America: Improving Quality and Honoring Individual Preferences Near the End of Life.”

Alecson is faculty member in the Schools of Health Science and Nursing, an author, and one of Excelsior’s resident experts on death, dying and bereavement.

Deborah's Podcast.
Check out other links KOHD-WC to Institute of Medicine.

This is How I Want to Die

by Rabbi Jack Mpline

This essay was published on October 22, 2014 in The Jewish Forward.

Deborah Alecson writes: "This is lovely and spot-on request made by a rabbi re: his dying."

This is an edited version of the 2011 Yom Kippur sermon by Rabbi Jack Moline where he explores the condition he wants to be in at the end of his life and how best to assure that outcome.  He describes his father's series of illnesses and surgeries that enabled him to live until the age of 65, only to die of brain cancer. When reflecting on his father's suffering he is aware that ages ago we died of incurable diseases, natural events, starvation, as prey to animals, etc. Modern medical technology and advances have brought us what is too often a long drawn out dying and years of chronic illness leading up to our death. Rabbi Moline does not want to die this way. He urges each of us to talk with our loved ones about what we want at the end of our life and not to soley rely on the advanced directives that we hopefully have also put into place.  Debra Alecson

Ending Live - PBS

"Barbara Mancini was arrested and charged with helping her dying father kill himself. Anderson Cooper has her story and more on the end-of-life debate."

This is a well-done. thought-provoking report on assisted suicide.

Ending Life - PBS.

My Girl (1991)

(from IMDb) The movie is set in Madison, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1972. Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chlumsky) is a 11-year-old tomboy and a hypochondriac. Vada's father, Harry Sultenfuss (Dan Aykroyd), is an awkward widower who does not seem to understand his daughter, and as a result, constantly ignores her. His profession as a funeral director, in which the Sultenfuss' residence is also a funeral parlor, has led Vada to develop an obsession with death as well as disease. Vada also thinks that she killed her own mother, since her mother died giving birth to her. She regularly tends to her invalid grandmother (Ann Nelson), who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. Harry's brother Phil (Richard Masur), who lives nearby, also stops by frequently to help out the family.

Vada is teased by other girls because her best friend, Thomas J. Sennett (Macaulay Culkin), is unpopular and a boy. Their summer adventuresfrom first kiss to last farewellintroduce Vada to the world of adolescence.

Vada's summer begins well. She befriends Shelley Devoto (Jamie Lee Curtis), the new make-up artist at her father's funeral parlor, who provides her with some much needed guidance. She is also infatuated with her teacher, Mr. Bixler (Griffin Dunne), and steals some money from Shelley's trailer to attend a summer writing class that he is teaching.

But before long, things start to fall apart. Her father and Shelley start dating and get engaged, she cannot bring herself to tell her father that she has experienced her first menstrual cycle, Thomas J. dies from an allergic reaction to bee stings while looking for Vada's mood ring in the woods, and she finds out that Mr. Bixler is engaged to someone else.

Vada's grief, however, manages to mend the rift between her and her father, she learns that she didn't kill her mom during childbirth (since her father tells her that things like mothers dying in childbirth just happen), and by the end of the movie, Vada has not only managed to deal with her pain and grief, but has also overcome some of her previous issues as well.  1991, 102 munutes

Note:  This is a sweet movie about death and dying and grief.  It's light entertainment with some moving moments.  DJE

Caitlin Dougherty: Funeral Director

"Talking about death isn't easy, but mortician Caitlin Doughty is trying to reform how we think about the deaths of loved ones — and prepare for our own.

'My philosophy is honesty,' Doughty tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "I think that we've been so hidden from death in this culture for such a long time that it's very refreshing and liberating to talk about death in an open, honest manner."

Doughty is the founder of The Order of the Good Death, a group of funeral industry professionals, academics and artists who focus on the rituals families perform with their dead and how the industry disposes of dead bodies. She is also starting her own funeral service in Los Angeles, called Undertaking L.A., that will help families with planning after they lose a family member.

Doughty's new memoir, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory, serves as, among other things, a way for her to cope with working with dead bodies."  This book is also available in audio format (read by the author). 

Caitlin Dougherty's Web Site.