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 MoreTag: Death and Dying
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 MoreWhat Deathbed Visions Teach Us About Living
Chris Kerr was 12 when he first observed a deathbed vision. His memory of that summer in 1974 is blurred, but not the sense of mystery he felt at the bedside of his dying father. Throughout Kerr’s childhood in Toronto, his father, a surgeon, was too busy to spend much time with his son, except […]
Read MoreOverdose 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 MoreChaim 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 MoreNew 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 MoreShould 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 MoreI Promised My Sister I Would Write About How She Chose to Die
On the day before my sister Julie died, I lay down on her bed and held her gingerly in my arms, afraid that any pressure would hurt her. She had lost so much weight that she looked like a stick figure I might have drawn when we were kids. As her body had wasted, her […]
Read MoreIn the Shelter of a Weeping Beech
Off Route 6 on Cape Cod, a few miles in from the bay near Yarmouth, Mass., there hides a giant ancient English weeping beech. The tree is so big that it has its own parking lot. But you don’t see it right away. Tucked among a clutch of shrubs and smaller trees, it’s not clear […]
Read MoreA 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 MoreThis 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 MoreKissinger’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 MoreHow New Motherhood Changed Me as a Doctor
The family looked toward me, curious, clearly eager for a story that had nothing to do with illness. Happy to oblige, I explained that the fries weren’t for me. They were for my baby. With that, the tone in the room shifted. Someone jumped in. Fries for a baby! How old? Someone else asked if […]
Read MoreIt’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 MoreRosalynn 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 MoreThe 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 MoreGrief During a Holiday of Gratitude
It’s also a remarkable amount of work, a second (or third) job. My partner, Ian, and I have sat down with groups and met with counselors. We have joined Zoom sessions, read the words of those who have come before us. Together with our surviving daughter, Hana, 10, we recently traveled to a conference at […]
Read MoreHow Does Hospice Care Work?
Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, have both transitioned into hospice care at home. Mr. Carter, 99, decided to forgo additional medical interventions in February after facing several health issues in recent years, including melanoma — a skin cancer that spread to his brain and his liver. The Carter Center announced that […]
Read MoreSomewhat 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 MoreMatthew 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 MoreAs Ukraine War Grinds On, Widows Try to See Life After Loss
Maria and her husband, Artem, dreamed of visiting the Grand Canyon. Alyona and Ilya fantasized about building a bar, with a stage for local musicians. Yulia and Oleksandr talked about taking a road trip in the mountains. Their dreams endure. Only now, as war widows, Maria, Alyona and Yulia are being encouraged by a support […]
Read MoreAlzheimer’s and the Paradox of Advance Directives
Two years ago, when my father was dying of dementia, my siblings and I faced a terrible dilemma: Whose wishes for his medical treatment were we to honor? Those of my father back when he was a healthy, highly functioning geneticist? Or those of the simpler, weakened man my father had become? It was a […]
Read MoreA 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 MoreThe 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 MoreHow 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 MoreLiving and Dying in ¾ Time
WASHINGTON — Whenever I take my young researchers on celebrity interviews, I give them the Warning: No matter how well you hit it off, don’t feel bad if you ever run into the stars again and they act as though they don’t know you. That’s usually how it goes. Think of them as elusive, shimmering […]
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