“Through a Time of Darkness … I Found the Solid Point of a Restart” I cannot look at the countless events that happened in the past year but with a great gratitude which moves me to tears. It has, paradoxically, been the toughest year and at the same time the most revolutionary one because of
to stand in front of one dying … I must first do my own work Read More »
… John Tavener died this past fall … Plough obituary … NYT obituary … For the last six years of his life, Tavener was crippled and in constant pain. Already suffering from Marfan syndrome, a congenital disease that affected his heart, eyes, and muscles, he suffered a series of heart attacks which he barely survived.
giving thanks for pain … Read More »
… or “How to cure yourself of road rage.” Thoracic surgeon Jeffrey Piehler builds his own coffin … with profound effects in his relationships with family, friends and himself.
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night … Read More »
We sicken before we die so that we will be weaned from our body. The milk that nourished us grows thin and sour; turning away from the breast, we begin to be restless for a separate life. Yet this first life, this life on earth, on the body of earth – will there, can there
weaned from our bodies … Read More »
… a new translation, done as the translator himself was dying.
the death of ivan ilyich … Read More »
Perhaps it was the rhythm of the wheels clicking past the joints of the rails, or the lurching and swaying of the coaches, or the weaving of steam and smoke as they painted the brush and the sandy banks through which the train sped. Or perhaps it was the fields newly ploughed and newly cut,
feeling the souls of the fallen … rising upward Read More »
Farr Curlin discusses Jeffrey Bishop’s book The Anticipatory Corpse … In The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power, and the Care of the Dying, physician-philosopher Jeffrey Bishop argues that modern medicine has adopted a “metaphysics of efficient causation”—a focus on the immediate cause of things that ignores their ultimate purpose. As a result, medicine now takes its
begin with the end in mind … Read More »
Be honest about your desire … make a wish before dying … John Waters invites people to write their last dream on walls … but the revolution is expressed in the question itself … I have become intrigued by the worldwide invitation “Before I Die,” for people to write their greatest desires on public spaces.
… would not be beautiful enough … In the past few days I had an experience that I want to verify with you, and I also want to ask you a question. My father got sick, apparently with the flu, then as the days went by, strange, worrisome symptoms appeared, to the point that on
even heaven without that hard headed man who is my father … Read More »
Daniel Callahan and Peter Augustine Lawler discuss end-of-life care. More and more, our end-of-life care looks like the trench warfare of World War I: heavier and heavier economic and human costs with increasingly less ground being won. (Callahan) People today think of themselves less than ever as part of wholes greater than themselves—as part of
