Tag: Death and Dying

Kate Middleton, Britney Spears and the Online Trolls Doubting Their Existence

Kate Middleton has long been a magnet for unproven rumors: She pressured an art gallery to remove a royal portrait! She split from her husband! She changed her hairstyle to distract from pregnancy rumors! She did not give birth to her daughter! This year, speculation kicked into overdrive. Ms. Middleton — now Catherine, Princess of […]

Read More

Trump’s Warning of a ‘Blood Bath’ if He Loses

To the Editor: Re “Trump Says Some Migrants Are ‘Not People’ and Predicts a ‘Blood Bath’ if He Loses” (nytimes.com, March 16): In a campaign speech in Ohio on Saturday, former President Donald Trump said that if he didn’t get elected, “it’s going to be a blood bath for the country.” His warning was not […]

Read More

When Medicaid Comes After the Family Home

The letter came from the state department of human services in July 2021. It expressed condolences for the loss of the recipient’s mother, who had died a few weeks earlier at 88. Then it explained that the deceased had incurred a Medicaid debt of more than $77,000 and provided instructions on how to repay the […]

Read More

Overdose or Poisoning? A New Debate Over What to Call a Drug Death.

The death certificate for Ryan Bagwell, a 19-year-old from Mission, Texas, states that he died from a fentanyl overdose. His mother, Sandra Bagwell, says that is wrong. On an April night in 2022, he swallowed one pill from a bottle of Percocet, a prescription painkiller that he and a friend bought earlier that day at […]

Read More

Chaim Soutine’s Lessons For Today’s Refugee Artists

Pablo Picasso was among the few who stood beside Chaim Soutine’s grave as his corpse was lowered into it. It was Aug. 11, 1943, and Paris was under Nazi occupation. Mr. Soutine — the artist, the genius, the Jew — had died in his hospital bed with his belly cut open after being smuggled into […]

Read More

New York Food Delivery Workers, Overlooked in Life, Are Honored in Death

After the brass band packed up its instruments, Sergio Solano and two other food delivery workers walked a white bicycle to an overpass within view of the United Nations headquarters. A fellow worker, or compañero, as they call each other meaning “partner,” had died less than two weeks earlier that September in yet another bicycle […]

Read More

Should Palliative Psychiatry Be Considered for Anorexia?

A few days later, when she was not imminently dying anymore, Naomi announced that she was going home — and the hospital responded by placing her on a 72-hour mental-health hold. Clinicians then obtained what Colorado calls a short-term certification, which required, by judicial order, that Naomi be detained and treated, in her case until […]

Read More

A Rejected A.L.S. Drug Made Me Rethink the Role of Hope in Medicine

Of all the ways the body can go wrong, A.L.S. is one of the most frightening. It begins subtly — a twitching muscle, a cough when you swallow or a clumsy hand. But then it progresses. Motor neurons degenerate and die. You lose the ability to talk, to eat and ultimately to breathe. There is […]

Read More

This Gorilla’s Caregivers Face Familiar Questions About Aging

This month, as the patient lay anesthetized on a table, a cardiologist made a half-inch incision through the skin of his chest. She removed a small implanted heart monitor with failing batteries and inserted a new one. The patient, like many older males, had been diagnosed with cardiac disease; the monitor would provide continuing data […]

Read More

Kissinger’s Death Ends an Era in U.S.-China Relations

State media outlets hailed him as “China’s old friend.” On Chinese social media, people said his death marked the end of an era. They recalled his last visit to the country, in July, at age 100. For many in China, Henry A. Kissinger represented a now-bygone chapter in relations between China and the United States, […]

Read More

It’s OK to Never ‘Get Over’ Your Grief

Queen Victoria wore black for the remaining four decades of her life after her beloved husband, Prince Albert, died in 1861. This mourning practice was still commonplace during the first decades of the 20th century but almost nonexistent by its end. My great-grandmother, who died in 1999, was the only person I knew who wore […]

Read More

Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter’s Hometown Mourns for the Love of a Lifetime

There was a time, Rosalynn Carter once confessed, when she dreaded going back to Plains, her tiny Georgia hometown. Actually, she was furious about it. She was enjoying her life as a young sailor’s wife, relishing the freedom and sense of adventure that came from being so far from home. But then, her husband, Jimmy, […]

Read More

The Carters’ Hometown Mourns for the Love of a Lifetime

There was a time, Rosalynn Carter once confessed, when she dreaded going back to Plains, her tiny Georgia hometown. Actually, she was furious about it. She was enjoying her life as a young sailor’s wife, relishing the freedom and sense of adventure that came from being so far from home. But then, her husband, Jimmy, […]

Read More

Somewhat Guiltily, Ukrainians Miss Matthew Perry

It was the middle of the night in Ukraine, and Natalia Sosnytska couldn’t sleep. So she opened the Instagram app on her phone — and saw that the actor Matthew Perry had died. She broke down in tears, she said, then immediately felt embarrassed. “We need to remember those dying here in Ukraine daily, but […]

Read More

Matthew Perry Is Mourned by Friends and Colleagues

Celebrities, actors and entertainment and political leaders shared tributes to Matthew Perry, who starred on the hit television series “Friends” and died on Saturday at the age of 54. His death was confirmed by Capt. Scot Williams of the Los Angeles Police Department’s robbery-homicide division. Although there was no immediate cause of death, there was […]

Read More

A Brief History of Consequential Deaths in Congress

Dianne Feinstein, who died on Thursday at 90, was the first senator to die in office since John McCain in 2018. But since the first Congress convened in 1789, deaths in office have been a fairly regular occurrence. “You look back in history, nearly one in 10 members of Congress have,” Jane L. Campbell, the […]

Read More

The Unspeakably Sad Reminder of the ‘Other Paris’

There was no TV in the waiting area, no magazines, and eventually Ava’s phone began to die, cutting off her line of communication to me, so she was forced to read whatever pamphlets, signs, and labels were in English, and, finally, to pay attention to the people around her. A little girl who’d gotten stitches […]

Read More

How a Lawsuit in N.J. Could Bring Aid in Dying to Millions

Judy Govatos has heard that magical phrase “you’re in remission” twice, in 2015 and again in 2019. She had beaten back Stage 4 lymphoma with such aggressive chemotherapy and other treatments that at one point she grew too weak to stand, and relied on a wheelchair. She endured several hospitalizations, suffered infections and lost nearly […]

Read More