Topic: death

Photographer Humanizes Breast Cancer In Series Of Late Wife’s Fight

Breast cancer is terrifying. We can pour out statistics on how many people are diagnosed each year, on mortality rates, on who’s getting more of it and who’s most at risk…all of it is important information, but no number can give us an idea of the actual experience. In a heartbreakingly honest documentation of his late wife Jennifer’s fight with breast cancer, photography Angelo Merendino shows the face — the devastating, painful, slow face — of what the disease is like.of this disease. More »

Woman Dies After Care Facility Staff Member Refuses To Perform CPR

Nursing homes are a scary prospect to some. Allowing your dear relatives to be in the care of a facility, including many rotating employees whom you know nothing about, is a frightening idea. Fortunately, most nursing homes for the elderly are fantastic, filled with intelligent, qualified employees who enjoy their jobs and the people they care for. However, the case of a recent nursing home death in Bakersfield, California, will likely be raising questions regarding the emergency policies of many of these care facilities. More »

How Easily Can You Stand Up? This Could Predict When We’re Going To Die, Study Says

According to researchers, a simple test that evaluates how easily you can go from sitting to standing could help predict how long you’re going to live. Oh, great. Another study that tells us when we’re going to die. Although, this one is pretty interesting–even if it is a bit far-fetched.
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Cheryl Strayed: Hiking The Pacific Crest Trail To Cope With The Loss Of A Mother

At 26, four years after her mother’s death, Cheryl Strayed hiked over 1,000 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail—alone—to cope with her grief and a life that had spun out of control. Today, a New York Times bestselling author, her experience is laid out in Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (read an excerpt here), a moving memoir that has us thinking a lot about our own mothers. Not to mention, what it would take to get through that kind of experience, with or without the grief of losing a mother. More »

Would You Donate Your Organs For A Free Funeral?

Britain has announced that they are considering a new initiative that would allow people who donate their organs to have their funerals paid for by the country’s health service in an effort to encourage more people to become organ donors. It’s a move that is generating a lot of controversy, but it also raises two good question: Is this ethical, and would you sign up to be an organ donor if you knew you would get a free funeral? More »

Is Kara Kennedy’s Death A Wake-Up Call?

When the word got out this weekend about the death of Kara Kennedy, daughter of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, my first thought was that it must have been due to a recurrence with lung cancer. Then I heard that she actually died of a heart attack (after a workout, no less). And she was only 51.

Whenever I hear news like that, I have to wonder: Is this a wake-up call? For me? For all of us? Granted, reports seem to indicate that her heart was already in a weakened state due to the cancer she was diagnosed with at age 42 and the subsequent chemotherapy and surgery she endured. Not that any age is acceptable to get cancer or have a heart attack, but 42 and 51 respectively are just so young.
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Your Desk Job Could Be Killing You

We were hoping that even though we spend the majority of our working hours tethered to our computer, the fact that we exercise each morning would negate the consequences of sitting all day. But, according to the release of a 13-year study, even us athletes-by-morning, desk-jobbers-by-day have a higher risk of death than slackers who don’t exercise yet don’t sit all day either. More »

Fit Inspiration: Virginie Razzano Competes In French Open After Fiance’s Death

Americans like to take pride in their refusal to take time off, but yesterday, Frenchwoman Virginie Razzano gave the American work ethic a serious run for its money: The French tennis player competed in the French open just eight days after her fiancee passed away. Her story is sad, but inspiring all the same: Her trainer and partner, Stephane Vidal, died after a nine-year battle with cancer, and she played as a tribute to his memory More »

Dying On Camera: Man’s Televised Death Causes Controversy, But Haven’t We Seen Worse?

In the UK, a nationally broadcast science series entitled Inside The Human Body, which airs on BBC1, plans to air the peaceful death of an 84-year-old man, surrounded by his family. The show, which has previously documented conceptions, births, adolescence into adulthood, and the body’s natural defenses, will broadcast the man’s passing in an episode slated for May 12th. Hey, it’s not worse than anything I’ve seen on Fox’s Most Shocking High Speed Car Chases.

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Dealing With the 5 Stages of Grief: Acceptance

The five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. The fifth stage is acceptance. We often misinterpret it to mean, you are “all right” or “OK” with what has happened. This is not acceptance. Will we ever feel OK or all right about the loss of a loved one? This stage is about accepting the reality that our loved one is physically gone and recognizing that this new reality is the permanent reality. Acceptance looks like remembering, recollecting, reorganizing and reinvesting. As hard as it is, we begin to realize sadly that it was our loved one’s time to die — always too soon for us, and probably too soon for him or her, too. Perhaps he was very old or full of pain and disease. Perhaps her body was worn down and she was ready for her journey to be over. But our journey still continues. It is not yet time for us to die; in fact, it is time for us to heal. More »

Aquamation: The Eco-Friendly Way to Go

We spend a lot of time thinking about eco-friendly ways to live, but what about your impact on the environment after death? Aquamation, a new method of body disposal, is starting to provide a green alternative to burial and cremation, both of which can have negative impacts on the environment through greenhouse gases and leaching of embalming liquids into the soil.

The company, Aquamation Industries, is based in Australia and disposes of corpses by putting them in a stainless steel vat containing a potassium-hydroxide and water solution, which takes four hours to dissolve the body until all that’s left is the skeleton, which is then crushed and given to the family of the deceased. More »

Attention, Wet Fish: A firm handshake, among other things, has been linked to a longer life. (via BBC News)

Legendary Broadcast and Print Journalist Daniel Schorr Dead at 93: Rest in peace, Mr. Schorr. You and your inimitable voice and style will be missed. Now that was a life well-lived. (via The New York Times)

Can I Become An Ex-Smoker? Watch Me Try.

This is the first post by Drew Grant, Associate Editor of our sister site, Crushable, about her efforts to quit smoking using the Become An Ex program. Telling people you’re quitting smoking just doesn’t have the same social impact that … More »

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