There is an excellent book by Bronnie Ware – a palliative nurse looking after those at the end of their lives. She found that the dying have five common regrets:
Continue reading “Avoid These 5 Regrets”Avoid These 5 Regrets
death
When do you become a grown-up?
I’ve been feeling like a child in recent weeks. My mother’s passing has caused this. It’s made me wonder about adulthood. When exactly are we grown up? I know for sure it’s not turning eighteen – even if that’s what the law says. I cringe when I think of myself at that age pretending to be all grown up. Behind my smiling persona was the same five-year-old that craved pleasing others.
Continue reading “When do you become a grown-up?”Losing My Mother; Gaining Your Wisdom
It’s been almost two weeks since my mother passed away, and I’ve had such an outpouring of support that I can’t thank people enough. It’s helped me understand how at times of pain, there is much love. Many of you have reached out with lovely words and I thought I’d share some of them. They contain much wisdom, which can hopefully help others too.
Continue reading “Losing My Mother; Gaining Your Wisdom”My Mother Passed Away
We got the call you don’t want to get last Saturday. My mother had been struggling with cancer for months. She recently had to be admitted to a care home. She had lost much of her mobility. I had been coming to my home-town Oxford every weekend to visit her ever since. The call was from the care home. They told us that mother was coming to the end of her life. They seemed to know about these things.
Continue reading “My Mother Passed Away”The Statistics Of Our Death (2 min read)
Death. When we hear about it, usually on the news in the form of murders and wars, it is presented as shocking and rare events. The rest of the time, we take cues from our youth-centric culture to live in a cocoon of apparent immortality. Yet, we all know we will die. It is as inevitable as paying taxes. And it much more common than we think.
Guess how many people died in the United States last year? 5,000, 100,000, more? Continue reading “The Statistics Of Our Death (2 min read)”
What Would You Say On Your Deathbed?
I know, I know, not the most happy title to a blog, but sometimes it’s worth thinking about death as well as life. It’s amazing how we airbrush death out of our lives. On TV, social media and in magazines, all we can see is youth. On the news, death is only shown as a shocking event (usually in the form of murders and such things), yet millions die every year from old age in the US alone. It’s inevitable, and death is the great leveller – rich, poor, black, white, religious, atheist – we all die.
So what do we think when we’re close to our last breath? Continue reading “What Would You Say On Your Deathbed?”