Some Death and Dying Resources

Maggie Callanan, a hospice nurse for the last 30 years and the author of "Final Gifts," an influential book about death and dying.

CaringBridge, CarePages and similar sites, these are social networks for ill people that create virtual locations for loved ones.

Sacred Dying Institute seeks to bring spirituality to the act of dying.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross books.  In her 1969 book, On Death and Dying, she introduced The Five Stages of Grief, otherwise now known as the Kubler-Ross grief cycle.

The book The American Way of Death, by Jessica Mitford. was published in 1963.  It was a runaway best-seller.  It is an expose of abuses in the funeral home industry in the U.S.  An updated revision, The American Way of Death Revisited, appeared in 1998.

My Best Friend's Death

Claude died about 4 years ago now.  He was 48.  He died of bone cancer.  He was big, strong, a great athlete, a surfer, a musician, a father, a husband, and he had a great laugh.  I think about him pretty much every day.  He was my oldest friend.  He lived in California and I in Pennsylvania.  I found out after the fact that he had died.  The last I heard he was getting better.  When he was better I would travel to visit with him.  That never happened.  Unfortunately I was unable to travel to California for his memorial service.  My sister in California was able to represent me.  Thank you Ellen.  So what do we do now.  So many of us in America grew up in a very mobile society.  I grew up in New York.  Now I live in Pennsylvania, a sister of mine lives in California, and another sister lives in Vermont (her husband grew up in Dublin, Ireland).  We communicate so often via email and text and Skype.  Technology is wonderful, but it doesn't replace being together physically with someone.  Traditional mourning rituals are often religious based and involve physical presence and attendance.  But many seem to have moved away from traditional funerals and burial and mourning.  What do we do if we are not nearby geographically?

Mourning is often a personal experience anyway.  Time does often heal many wounds.  When a loved one dies you want the world to take a time-out.  But it doesn't.  Time is surreal immediately after a death.  The world keeps spinning.  So many people are too "busy" to deal with death and loss and mourning.  If you know someone who loses a loved one tread lightly but do talk to them, and maybe deliver some food to them.  Some sort of secular mourning gathering could be appropriate in helping people mourn and perhaps help them to move beyond mourning.  If the griever is distant from family plan with friends a gathering for the griever.  Make them by invitation only.  Let the griever share words or pictures or whatever about the deceased, if appropriate.  It takes a village to raise a child but it can be nice when a death occurs.

Van Gogh Vodka and Ashes

Vincent van Gogh is buried at Auvers-sur-Oise, about 70 miles northwest of Paris, next to his brother Theo.  The cemetery is a 10 or 15 minute walk outside Auvers.  Van Gogh was put into a common grave with a 15-year lease.  Later there was money to move the body to a better spot, which is where he lies now.  Vincent's body was placed in a coffin made by the carpenter who had been supplying his picture frames.  Vincent van Gogh was a great painter - none greater, many think.

Tens of thousands, perhaps up to half a million, make a pilgrimage to his grave each year.  People leave sunflowers, irises, poems, drawings, and as is the custom in some cultures, food for the journey beyond.  The Japanese have a particular affection for van Gogh, perhaps because for a time he was interested in Japanese art.  Many Japanese travel each year across the world to his grave to leave, or to commingle with the earth of van Gogh's grave, the ancestral ashes of their own dear departed.  For much of the year, the thick ivy covering his grave carries a light coating of grey.  Russians who visit pour vodka onto the dark red soil of the same spot.

VA Cemeteries National Disgrace

In August, 2010 the Washington Post reported that an internal Army investigation found that 211 graves at Arlington National Cemetery were unmarked or misidentified.  After that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) decided to review all 131 cemeteries under its control.  So far the VA audit has revealed problems with 123 graves in 6 VA cemeteries in six states, including eight cases in which people were buried in the wrong site.   Most of the other mistakes consisted primarily of headstones and markers that were moved to the wrong graves during renovations, generally one space away from where they were supposed to be.  A smaller number of mistakes consists of missing headstones.  The VA has contacted affected families to apologize and to describe the corrections being made.  What would the repercussions be if this happened in non-VA cemeteries?

Bruegel / Hitchens

Pieter Bruegel:  "Because the world is so faithless, I go my way in mourning."  PB (1525-69) was a masterful Flemish painter, mostly of rural scenes.

The highly regarded English writer Ian McEwan was in the Texas hospital with Chritstopher Hitchens during his last days and saw him linked, online, to a celebration of his life in London.  "We helped him out of bed and into a chair and set my laptop in front of him . . . and what we heard was astounding, and for Christopher, uplifting.  It was the noise of 2,000 voices small-talking before the event," Mr. McEwan wrote.  "Christopher grinned and raised a thin arm in salute."

Irene Nemirovsky

Irene was arrested by French police on July 13, 1942 because she was a foreign Jew.  She died a month later in Auschwitz.  She is mostly an unknown even though she was a prolific and intelligent writer.  Irene was married with 2 children.  Her husband also died at Auschwitz.  Her writing style was matter-of-fact, not sentimental.  She was a moralist writer.  In life she was innately an optimist.  Nemirovsky is best known now for "Suite Francaise."  It was finally published only recently in 2004 and it became an international best seller.  Mr. Nemirovsky gave the manuscript and the couple's 2 daughters to a governess.  Both daughters and the manuscript somehow survived the Nazis.  One daughter, Denise, could not look at the manuscript for over 50 years.

Death Poems

There are many, many, many poems about death.  In different cultures it is a tradition for literate people to write a poem near the time of one's own death.  You see this often especially in China, Korea and Japan (beginning around 600 A.D.).  Enjoy this poem by Carl Sandburg:

Death Snips Proud Men by Carl Sandburg

DEATH is stronger than all the governments because the governments are men and men die and then death laughs: Now you see ’em, now you don’t.

Death is stronger than all proud men and so death snips proud men on the nose, throws a pair of dice and says: Read ’em and weep.

Death sends a radiogram every day: When I want you I’ll drop in—and then one day he comes with a master-key and lets himself in and says: We’ll go now.

Death is a nurse mother with big arms: ’Twon’t hurt you at all; it’s your time now; you just need a long sleep, child; what have you had anyhow better than sleep?