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How to Talk to Loved Ones about Your End-of-Life Wishes
I talked last week about how important it is to make your end-of-life wishes known before it is necessary. I emphasized that you need to have difficult conversations with whoever you anticipate will be a decision-maker for you in the event that you can’t make decisions. Even if you can make your own end-of-life decisions…
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Help Your Loved Ones Follow Your Wishes: make a will + advance directive and have the difficult conversations
From the moment my husband’s stroke started, I had to make decisions for him: call 9-1-1, consent to him being transported to another hospital from the original one the ambulance took him to, authorize surgery to remove part of his skull to allow his brain to swell without causing more damage to his brain, and…
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Three Years Out: Grief Is Familiar + Life Is Good
My husband has been dead now for three years. My life feels good. I’m comfortable with who I am. I date, I socialize, I host small dinners, I dance. I don’t feel injured all the time, like I did for a long time after his death. The shifts in my grief during the third year…
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Don’t be a jerk about grammar, especially when someone is being vulnerable
I’ve been thinking about verb tense lately. As I slowly write my memoir of being my husband’s caregiver after his stroke, verb tense gives me regular fits. Yes, everything happened in the past, but it still feels so present to me. Using past tense verbs seems inauthentic, but using present tense seems grammatically incorrect. Last…
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You’re not the only one who is lonely
In his compassionate and deeply thought-provoking book Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, Vivek Murthy makes clear that nearly everyone is lonely at some point in their life but one of the cruel tricks of loneliness is making you think you’re the only one who is lonely. You are…
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Recognizing a Grieving Behavior that No Longer Serves Me
For over four years, date night dancing has shown up on my google calendar every Saturday night. In January 2020, I gave my husband video dance lessons for his birthday. We loved dancing together but had a limited repertoire and had talked often about taking dance lessons but always found an excuse not to. I…
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Identifying a New Secondary Loss, Nearly 3 Years Out
The death of a loved one has a ripple effect. There’s the loss of that person and then there are the secondary losses—the shifts in routines that make a day feel off, the friendships that fade because the person who held them together is gone or people are too uncomfortable to maintain them, the end…
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Celebrating Special Occasions
Almost any time I have a glass of wine or a cocktail with someone else, I say “cheers” and clink my glass with theirs. I love the “cheers” and clinking ritual. It reminds me that I am lucky to be sharing a moment with whoever I am with and it adds a note of celebration.…
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Pining Away for Our Dead One’s Things
When my husband died, I had him cremated. In the course of making the arrangements, the funeral home offered to sell me all sorts of urns, memorial jewelry, and plaques, and finally, the director told me they could take my husband’s fingerprint and have it engraved on a necklace charm or something else for me.…
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It’s OK to Keep Talking about Your Dead Loved Ones
One of my favorite TED Talks on grief is Nora McInerny’s “We Don’t ‘Move On’ from Grief. We Move Forward with It.” I’ve recommended it to everyone I know because McInerny does a brilliant job of articulating the idea that grieving people don’t ever “get over” their grief. I recently watched it again—for maybe my…
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