Many years ago, I was visiting a friend’s house, having just heard that her husband was in his last few days. She was not a close friend, but I knew them both as part of the Quaker community…

“What shall I say?” asked Howard, obviously uncomfortable about telling his 7- and 9-year-old that their grandfather had just died. They had only seen him the other day, as usual, and he had seemed his usual cheerful self…

There are two words that, generally speaking, in the Western world we don’t like to mention much. One of them you will probably not be surprised by. But the other you might well be. Given my specialty is end of life planning, you can easily imagine what…

Eugenie was telling me how wonderful she felt. This was unusual and unexpected because she was in her early 70s and had several health challenges, but on this day she told me: “Something has shifted, and it’s all because I did something…

I never thought about death much, other than as a concept, until my husband was diagnosed with cancer in 2010. Now, as I enter my 60th year, I’m very aware of the juxtaposition of life and death. It is simply impossible to have one without the other…

Sylvia was becoming more and more frail. It was clear that, though in good spirits, her body was nearing the end of life. She kept having visits to the hospital and had recently had a fall which had precipitated one of these. As women 60 and over, we will often…

Marie’s son was distraught. He had told his mother he would have the doctors do everything they could – but now they were saying that they didn’t know how long she would be able to breathe on her own without the tube, nor did they know…

It took me quite some time to pluck up the courage and try internet dating after my husband died. At first, even the thought of it was horrifying, and my first visit to a dating site ended after just a minute or so. Read More

We all know that writing a will is a good idea, but many of us never find the time to get around to it. “I’m too young. I don’t have anything to leave behind. I’ll set my affairs in order.” These are all statements many of us have used to procrastinate creating a will, or refute the idea altogether. Read More

Diane was a practitioner in a complementary health clinic. She always seemed to have a smile for everyone. Sitting on reception, I would notice that she was one of the therapists who always had a full client list…