Photo by Syd Wachs on Unsplash

On Death and Dying

“when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?”

— Mary Oliver

““…we see death as we see ourselves. When we see ourselves dimly we see death, nonbeing dimly. When we see ourself, our being, in sharp clear light, we see our nonbeing, our death, in the same hard etched light.”?”

— E Mansell Pattison

“It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go.”

— Albert Einstein

“Roughly from the last two weeks until the last breath, somewhere in that interval, people become too sick, or too drowsy, or too unconscious, to tell us what they’re experiencing, and so it’s like a black box. It’s like a big, dark hole of we-don’t-know-what’s-going-on in that period.”

— Margaret Campbell, palliative care pioneer

“Death is as necessary for man’s growth as life itself.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

“It eventually occurred to me that a terminal diagnosis was not news that I was going to die—that was the one thing about the future I already knew. It was news that the rest of my life was going to be a lot shorter than I had imagined.”

— Frank Lederle, physician diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer

“Dying is at once a fact of life and a profound mystery. Death comes to all, yet each person experiences it in ways that are only partly accessible to the family member or physician, the researcher or philosopher.”

On Death and Dying

— Mary Oliver

— E Mansell Pattison

— Albert Einstein

— Margaret Campbell, palliative care pioneer

— Mahatma Gandhi

— Frank Lederle, physician diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer

— Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life (1997 report from the Institute of Medicine)

Articles by Jennie Dear

What does it feel like to die?

What it’s like to learn you’re going to die

The doctors who invented a new way to help people die

Videos by Jennie Dear

Resources on Death and Dying

Being Mortal video

Dying in America report

National Hospice organization

Facts and Figures from the NHPCO

Last Days of Life, from the National Cancer Institute

Books about preparing for dying