Daughter Stayed at Her Parents’ Sides Before and After Deaths
This is Rachel’s story, as told in her own words, about navigating and honoring the deaths of her beloved parents — what she refers to now as a “deeply satisfying experience.” Our “Opening Our Hearts” stories are based on people’s real-life experiences with grief and loss. By sharing these experiences, we hope to help our readers feel less alone in their grief, and ultimately aid them in their healing.
Creating Powerful Connections With Music and Storytelling
Jackie Vanderbeck has been building connections through music and storytelling since she was a child. The daughter of a dancer, her own creative expressions and musical performances were encouraged and nurtured during her youth in Sacramento, California. By the age of 8, Jackie was actively participating in the Fair Oaks Children’s Repertory Theater (which closed in 1997 with the retirement of its founder, Micky Wever); and by the age of 12, she was performing professionally with the Sacramento Theatre Company and Broadway at Music Circus.
Examining the Archaeology of the Undead 
Deviant burial in Czech Republic.
Image courtesy of Mittnik A., Wang C-C., Svoboda J., Krause J.
Countless books, films and oral traditions stretching back through the farthest reaches of recorded thought have conjured images of reanimated corpses rising from the earth to extract their lost lifeforce from those who survived them. It’s a notion that startles us from childhood nightmares, strolls the streets on Halloween, and rakes in millions at the box office. What if this archetypal adversary isn’t a product of modern creativity, but an ancient ancestral memory of fears that arose long before our capacity to catalogue them?
Does Advance Care Planning Help Patients?
A systemized approach to support end-of-life patients and their families
A study involving nearly 65,000 older patients sought to understand whether primary care practitioners could play a key role in helping more people make end-of-life plans — and if such guidance could also reduce burdensome care.
The finding? Yes and no. That is, such guidance in planning helped, but in some cases, it also presented unexpected results for those who were seriously ill.
Letting Go, Holding On: 9 Quotes To Consider
Credit: jaymantri.com
As Mary Oliver asked in a poem, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” This is the time of year, as summer heats up, that gives many of us time and space to contemplate the idea of arrivals and departures, whether it means traveling or learning by staying in place. Quotes from Carlos Castaneda, Henry Miller and others might provide ideas and inspiration for how to spend this precious life before it ends … starting with one more from Oliver.
The Growing Crisis of Unclaimed Bodies
Depending on the state regulations, unclaimed bodies may be cremated and stored or scattered at sea. Some unclaimed bodies are buried by the government.
Across the United States, medical examiners, coroners, and funeral directors are seeing a troubling rise in the number of deceased individuals whose bodies go unclaimed. This points to, and results, in a number of problems: Why is this the case? And where do the bodies go?
The answers to the first are many, and as for the second, as The Atlantic reported in 2020, “solutions for managing the dead are getting weirder and more controversial.”
Who Cares for the Caregivers?: 
Final Messages of the Dying: 
Will I Die in Pain?: 
