Elizabeth Kleinfeld, Writer + Guide for Life's Messes

Category: death

  • Write Your Damn Will Today

    When my husband died, the last thing I wanted to think about was his will. Grieving is a full-time job. Because Tom had prepared his will years earlier, I was spared one of the most brutal complications that can follow the death of a loved one. I’ve heard other widows describe the nightmare of sorting…

  • Don’t Inflict Your Toxic Positivity on a Dying Person

    One hospice patient I visit lives with her daughter, Sarah. A visit with this patient is a visit with Sarah, as she almost never leaves her mother’s side. Every time I visit, I see her mother’s decline: her shoulders a little sharper beneath her pajamas (the only clothes she wears now), her cheekbones more prominent,…

  • Honoring Dignity until the End

    I learned after my husband had his stroke how important it is as a caregiver to respect the dignity of the person you are caring for. My husband was still the amazing person I fell in love with—strong-willed, take charge, and unwilling to suffer fools. The challenges he faced after his stroke were often at…

  • My Choice to Respect My Dead Husband’s Privacy

    After his stroke, Tom spent hours at a small black desk facing our porch, a compromise when his wheelchair made actually getting outside too difficult. The desk became his command center, gradually accumulating the tools and supplies for his unlikely new hobby: knife sharpening. Who else would take up knife sharpening after a stroke? That…

  • “I Am Not a Poor Thing!” How to Talk to a Dying Person

    Last weekend when I visited Margaret, my hospice patient who’s in her late 80s and dying of COPD, she was having a challenging day—she was confused about whether it was day or night, how to use a fork, whether coffee is a drink or a food. I told her a bit about what I had…

  • What Dying People Teach Me about Slowing Down

    Time moves slowly for Margaret as she waits to die. She’s been expecting death to come for months, having outlived her medical team’s predictions by 8 months now. Her adult children try to get her to move faster as she goes about her day. If she hasn’t touched her snack in a few minutes, one…

  • Love, Food, and Loss at the End of Life

    Margaret is dying. She’s almost 90 and has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a condition of the lungs that limits airflow and causes shortness of breath. She’s been on hospice care at home for many months and is ready to die. Usually when I visit her, she has very little appetite. Her children want her…

  • How to Use Beginner’s Mind to Talk about End-of-Life

    My end-of-life doula training emphasized from the beginning the importance of bringing curiosity and an open mind to conversations about end-of-life. Even when we think we know how someone feels or what they want, we need to allow room for them to surprise us. Adopting beginner’s mind is a great way to do this. Engaging…

  • How talking about death can help us live better

    The experience of being with my husband while he died was incredibly moving. It was heartbreaking and almost unbearable . . . and at the same time, it felt magical. I know magical may be a much more fanciful word than you were expecting in reference to death. I’m surprised to be using it, actually,…

  • What To Talk about with a Dying Person

    Several years ago, one of my favorite colleagues was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and her doctors anticipated she would die within a few months. The diagnosis was a shock. She was close to retirement and had been eagerly anticipating post-retirement life. She told me the news in her customary no frills way: “I’m a…