Letting Go
Death is not a tidy process. I've answered too many 3 am pages from the hospital to know that death does not honor anyone's schedule. Death can arrive under the stark glare of fluorescent lighting and the faint whiff of…
When Breath Becomes Air
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…
Praying Our Goodbyes
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…
Listen with the ear of your heart
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…
Charting a Course through Dementia’s Fog
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…
