Paul Kalanithi lived a charmed life. Until he didn’t. A neurosurgeon in his last year of residency, Dr. Kalanithi begins his memoir, When Breath becomes Air in what will be his last chapter—when he is diagnosed with stage 4 lung…
Years ago, when I worked at Abbott as a chaplain, I was paged into the hospital in the middle of an icy night. Abbott didn’t generally page in chaplains unless a patient was close to death, and this patient had…
As Steve Hartman of CBS News reported the story in one of his “On the Road” segments, it was a routine 911 call: Melvyn Amrine had gone out for a walk, and after 40 minutes, he hadn’t returned. Doris, his…
One of my grandmothers lived to 103, politically active to the end. My other grandmother died at 98, able to bake a pie from scratch until her last years. So when my mom showed signs of dementia at 80, we…
