#death
#death

12 hours ago

Do We Want to Die?

Society grapples with accepting mortality while simultaneously resisting control over death, creating a tension in attitudes toward life extension and end-of-life choices.

fromwww.businessinsider.com

I quit fast-paced journalism to care for my sick mom. My experience in both led me to become a celebrant at funerals.

Mandy Appleyard transitioned from a journalism career to caregiving for her mother, finding new purpose and connection during challenging times.

I'm 34 and I just noticed that I've been describing my own life to friends in the same tone I'd use to describe someone else's, and that distance turned out to be the actual problem, not the events I was describing - Silicon Canals

Self-distancing can help manage emotions, but relying on it too much can create a disconnect from one's own life experiences.

My Dad Was Murdered. When People Find Out, They All Ask the Same Question. They Don't Like My Answer.

Anger can be a complex, enduring emotion that transforms over time, often hidden beneath the surface after initial outbursts.

#assisted-dying

fromwww.bbc.com

EU data protection

The assisted dying bill has failed - but the debate isn't over

Medicine

Mother ends life at Swiss clinic four years after son's death

fromwww.bbc.com

EU data protection

The assisted dying bill has failed - but the debate isn't over

Medicine

Mother ends life at Swiss clinic four years after son's death

When Life Stops: But Only for You

Illness disrupts not only physiology but also our entire sense of existence and future, leading to a profound confrontation with uncertainty and mortality.

'Every life matters' - More than 100 people attend funeral of woman who died with no known relatives

The celebration of life for Margaret Ellen 'Peggy' Murdoch took place at Ronnie Thompson's Funeral Church in Lisburn, Co Antrim, where members of the public, neighbours and carers came together to pay their respects.

London

I'm 66 and I've been retired for two years and the loneliness isn't what I expected - it's not about being alone, I have a wife, I have children, I have neighbors - it's about no longer being the person a room turns toward when a decision needs to be made, and that shift from being needed to being included is the quietest demotion there is - Silicon Canals

The loneliness of retirement stems from feeling unnecessary as roles and needs change over time.

Psychology says the real reason being over 60 is so hard isn't aging itself its that modern culture has no framework for dignity without productivity and once you stop producing economic value, you're left to privately work out whether you still matter, in a culture that quietly keeps telling you that you don't - Silicon Canals

Retirement often leads to an identity crisis as individuals struggle with the loss of purpose and societal expectations of productivity.

4 days ago

Psychology says there's a specific version of loneliness that only shows up in retirement - not the absence of colleagues or the silence of mornings, but the slow understanding that the version of you the world was interested in was the one producing, performing, solving, and the version sitting at home in a quiet kitchen is someone the world has gently agreed to stop asking about - Silicon Canals

Retirement loneliness stems from losing one's identity and purpose, not just from missing social connections.

I always assumed retirement would bring peace - instead it feels like being handed the life I never had time to live, and the weight of that freedom is scarier than any deadline ever was - Silicon Canals

Retirement can lead to an identity crisis and feelings of purposelessness after decades of structured work life.

I retired with a full pension, a paid-off house, and children who love me - and spent the first winter understanding that I had confused being needed with being alive, and had no idea how to be the second thing without the first - Silicon Canals

Retirement can lead to an identity crisis when one's sense of self is tied to their work.

Nobody talks about the specific grief of watching your retired parent wander from room to room in a house that used to be chaos - not because they're sad, but because the structure that held their entire identity just became square footage - Silicon Canals

Retirement can lead to a loss of purpose for parents who defined themselves through their roles and responsibilities.

Renovation

I'm 66 and I've been retired for two years and the loneliness isn't what I expected - it's not about being alone, I have a wife, I have children, I have neighbors - it's about no longer being the person a room turns toward when a decision needs to be made, and that shift from being needed to being included is the quietest demotion there is - Silicon Canals

The loneliness of retirement stems from feeling unnecessary as roles and needs change over time.

Psychology says the real reason being over 60 is so hard isn't aging itself its that modern culture has no framework for dignity without productivity and once you stop producing economic value, you're left to privately work out whether you still matter, in a culture that quietly keeps telling you that you don't - Silicon Canals

Retirement often leads to an identity crisis as individuals struggle with the loss of purpose and societal expectations of productivity.

4 days ago

Psychology says there's a specific version of loneliness that only shows up in retirement - not the absence of colleagues or the silence of mornings, but the slow understanding that the version of you the world was interested in was the one producing, performing, solving, and the version sitting at home in a quiet kitchen is someone the world has gently agreed to stop asking about - Silicon Canals

Retirement loneliness stems from losing one's identity and purpose, not just from missing social connections.

I always assumed retirement would bring peace - instead it feels like being handed the life I never had time to live, and the weight of that freedom is scarier than any deadline ever was - Silicon Canals

Retirement can lead to an identity crisis and feelings of purposelessness after decades of structured work life.

I retired with a full pension, a paid-off house, and children who love me - and spent the first winter understanding that I had confused being needed with being alive, and had no idea how to be the second thing without the first - Silicon Canals

Retirement can lead to an identity crisis when one's sense of self is tied to their work.

Nobody talks about the specific grief of watching your retired parent wander from room to room in a house that used to be chaos - not because they're sad, but because the structure that held their entire identity just became square footage - Silicon Canals

Retirement can lead to a loss of purpose for parents who defined themselves through their roles and responsibilities.

Pets

Psychology says the grief people feel when a dog dies is often heavier than they expected because the dog witnessed years of their private self that no human in their life ever saw - Silicon Canals

Psychology says adult children don't grieve their aging parents all at once - they grieve them in a thousand tiny deaths, like the first time your mother forgets she told you the same story twice, or the afternoon you notice your father's hands shaking when he signs his name - Silicon Canals

Anticipatory grief involves mourning the gradual changes in living parents, representing incremental losses rather than just preparing for death.

Writing

I Didn't Expect to Outlive My Father

Fundraising

Modern Morals: My brother hasn't paid me back for my mum's funeral and it's brought up old feelings about him

Relationships

When Your Mom Dies

Losing a mother is a profound challenge, often complicated by the nature of the relationship and the grieving process.

Talking About Death: The Depth of the Meaning of Life

Death is a certain aspect of life that is often uncomfortable to discuss, yet it shapes our relationships and understanding of existence.

Pets

4 days ago

Psychology says the grief people feel when a dog dies is often heavier than they expected because the dog witnessed years of their private self that no human in their life ever saw - Silicon Canals

Grief for a pet can be profound and complex, often surpassing societal expectations based on relationship hierarchy.

Psychology says adult children don't grieve their aging parents all at once - they grieve them in a thousand tiny deaths, like the first time your mother forgets she told you the same story twice, or the afternoon you notice your father's hands shaking when he signs his name - Silicon Canals

Anticipatory grief involves mourning the gradual changes in living parents, representing incremental losses rather than just preparing for death.

I Didn't Expect to Outlive My Father

Outliving a parent prompts deep reflection on loss, identity, and the meaning of familial connections.

Fundraising

Modern Morals: My brother hasn't paid me back for my mum's funeral and it's brought up old feelings about him

Relationships

When Your Mom Dies

Losing a mother is a profound challenge, often complicated by the nature of the relationship and the grieving process.

Talking About Death: The Depth of the Meaning of Life

Death is a certain aspect of life that is often uncomfortable to discuss, yet it shapes our relationships and understanding of existence.

She invited her friends to come together to make her casket

MaddyChristine Hope Brokopp is creating her own casket with friends after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Austin

The Emotional Cost of Becoming Someone New

Coping with life changes during a Ph.D. journey involves financial adjustments, emotional challenges, and personal growth.

I'm 66 and I grew up in a house where my father worked sixty-hour weeks and never once told me he was proud of me - and I did the exact same thing to my sons before I realized the silence wasn't strength, it was a pattern I'd inherited like the color of my eyes - Silicon Canals

Emotional expression in father-son relationships can be deeply affected by generational patterns of communication.

Grief, Storytelling, and Identity

The concept album is a response to the brutal murder of Breedlove's father and stepmother at the hands of his stepbrother. The frame—the first song and the last—of the album is about the murders and their aftermath. But this is not a true crime record.

Music production

London politics

Living with ambiguous loss: 'When someone is dead, you get to have a eulogy, you put a lid on a coffin. With missing, you get none of that'

Families of missing persons experience prolonged uncertainty and struggle to grieve.

When Illness Becomes a Character in Your Life

Chronic illness often becomes personified, impacting adaptation and well-being.

Before Ruth died, we agreed on her ghost' sign. Experts say it's a powerful tool for working through grief

Negotiating a humorous ghost pact with a dying friend highlights the human need for connection and meaning after loss.

6 days ago

Psychology says the most isolating part of getting older isn't having fewer people around you - it's having fewer people who knew you when you were whole and fast and full of plans, because the version of you that exists in other people's memory is shrinking at the same rate as the guest list, and one day you'll be the only person alive who remembers what you were capable of - Silicon Canals

The hardest part of aging is losing connections to those who remember different versions of ourselves.

A Classmate Has Died-How Do I Talk About It With My Child?

Supporting a child through grief requires parents to process their own emotions first for effective communication and comfort.

France politics

Lebanese forced to bury their dead twice as war robs them of final goodbyes

War in Lebanon disrupts traditional funeral rites, forcing families to bury loved ones in temporary graveyards far from their hometowns.

There's a particular stillness that arrives in your 40s when you realize that the people who were supposed to approve of your choices never actually had a vote, and most of the exhaustion of the previous decade was the cost of campaigning in an election that didn't exist. - Silicon Canals

Realization in midlife reveals that the pursuit of approval was often imaginary, leading to self-acceptance and a shift in identity.

Psychology says the reason so many people crash emotionally in their early 60s isn't retirement or aging - it's the first time in decades they've had enough silence to hear their own thoughts and they don't recognize the person thinking them - Silicon Canals

Highly functional individuals often face delayed emotional collapse in their sixties due to decades of avoidance and relentless life pressures.

Books

Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry audiobook review an extraordinary chronicle of terminal illness

Sarah Perry's memoir chronicles her father-in-law David's rapid decline from illness to death, highlighting the emotional impact on family.

Cancer

'Writing allows me to face what is happening now. And what is happening now is that I'm dying'

Gabriel Rosenstock faces mortality with peace, relying on poetry and philosophy for support during his battle with terminal cancer.

Relationships

4 weeks ago

Deathbed Family Conflict

Family conflict often arises during end-of-life situations, leading to lasting emotional impacts and estrangement among relatives.

fromAxios

Death Cafe: Why strangers are talking about dying over tea

"A Death Cafe is not 'a grief group, a counseling session, or a place to push religious or other spiritual agendas,' Leija says."

Online Community Development

fromVulture

What If Grief Became a Staycation?

In the opening sequence, Laura encounters a paddleboarder clad entirely in black who turns a covered face silently in her direction as he passes by - death as an urban hobbyist.

Berlin music

There is a version of grief that only people in their forties understand. It's not for someone who died. It's for the life you were quietly building in your head for twenty years that you now realize was never going to happen, and the mourning has no name because the thing you lost never existed outside your own planning. - Silicon Canals

Midlife reckoning involves mourning an imagined life that never existed, rather than regret for choices made.

fromPhilosophynow

fromZak El Fassi | Systems Engineering for the Agentic AI Age

What do I have to fear, have I ever diminished by dying?

What do I have to fear, have I ever diminished by dying? I died as lifeless matter and became growing vegetation, then I died as a plant and reached animality. I died as an animal and became human.

Artificial intelligence

How Do You Want to Remember?

AI agent memory systems require continuous evaluation to detect silent failures where agents perform normally despite information loss and degraded recall accuracy.

fromEsquire

My Best Friend Lived an Extraordinary Life. Why Did He Take It So Soon?

Friendship can form unexpectedly, as seen in the bond between two boys who became best friends despite being in separate classrooms.

Arts

Almost human': life-size replicas of the dead help mend broken hearts in India

A Kolkata workshop creates lifesize replicas of deceased loved ones using clay, fiberglass, and silicon, helping families process grief by keeping realistic figures of the dead in their homes.

I'm 66 and the loneliest I've ever felt wasn't after my children left or my friends moved away - it was the morning I woke up and realized I had nothing that needed me, nothing that depended on my showing up, and the whole day stretched ahead like a road with no destination - Silicon Canals

Loneliness can stem from feeling unnecessary, not just from being alone.

Medicine

fromBuzzFeed

Hospital Workers Are Revealing The Heartbreaking Regrets Patients Had On Their Deathbeds, And Wow

Healthcare workers witness profound deathbed regrets centered on lost relationships, unresolved conflicts, and time wasted on non-essential pursuits rather than loved ones.

I asked 11 hospice nurses what dying people talk about in their final weeks and not one mentioned career achievements. Every single answer pointed to the same category of regret, and it had nothing to do with what they did or didn't accomplish. - Silicon Canals

Dying patients consistently regret unrepaired relationships and missed connections rather than professional achievements, revealing a fundamental misalignment between what modern life optimizes for and what ultimately matters.

Philosophy

Lorraine Courtney: It's time to ban eulogies outright - funerals are not an open-mic night

Eulogies should be excluded from requiem masses to preserve the centuries-old ritual, with personal remembrances reserved for wakes instead.

Public health

A death scholar on why we need to stop being naive about dying: I always hear, Can't you just put me into a nice meadow?'

Australia will experience peak death around 2040 as baby boomers age, doubling annual death rates and straining healthcare systems, while end-of-life control and autonomy become increasingly valued among those with resources.

On death and dying: 'You could tell that Mammy's soul had left her body because she didn't look the same. It shocked me'

When Dympna Little lost her beloved mother Lily Little to ovarian cancer in December 2024, it was her online community - she posts comedy videos as @dimplestilskin on Instagram and TikTok - who provided unexpected support and understanding of the experience of grief.

Social media marketing

Law

fromLos Angeles Times

23 years ago

When to Raise the Issue of Death

California sellers must disclose deaths occurring on property within three years; deaths older than three years generally don't require disclosure, though recent deaths remain a legal gray area.

UK news

fromMail Online

Death of traditional funeral: Brits ditch burials and cremations

UK residents increasingly choose eco-friendly burial alternatives like green burials, aquamation, artificial reefs, and space burial over traditional casket burials and cremations.

fromwww.bbc.com

No-one knows what to expect when you're dying - but hospices helped me

I think everybody worries when they come to the last stages, no one knows what to expect, but these people are wonderful at relaxing you and they help you an awful lot.

Public health

fromDeconstructing Yourself

My Friend and I Had an Awkward Conversation Before He Died. Now I'm Unsettled About What Comes Next.

We were both in our 60s and had no health problems that were about to kill us any time soon, but our parents had recently died, so end of life issues were on our minds. Plus everyone knows writing a will is the responsible thing to do. We'd talked to lawyers. While I considered my friend a close one, we didn't have many friends in common. I knew he had a brother and sister.

Law

Stay with the Grief

Today I saw images of students leaving their school with their hands raised in the air, hours after cowering in fear and terror in barricaded classrooms. Nine dead and twenty-seven wounded in the tiny Rocky Mountain town of Tumbler Ridge. The mayor, Darryl Krakowka, said, "I have lived here for 18 years. I probably know every one of the victims." And this in Canada, which often seems to us Americans like a bastion of sanity and normalcy in comparison with our madness.

Mindfulness

#retirement-planning

Relationships

My Dying Husband Has One Final Wish. I Don't Think I Can Give Him That.

fromBusiness Insider

Medicine

My dad died at 56 and never made it to retirement. The 3 lessons he taught me changed my own plans and perspective.

Relationships

My Dying Husband Has One Final Wish. I Don't Think I Can Give Him That.

fromBusiness Insider

Medicine

My dad died at 56 and never made it to retirement. The 3 lessons he taught me changed my own plans and perspective.

more#retirement-planning

Good Grief

Grief is a natural process that evolves over time, with emotional intensity gradually diminishing as waves of sadness become less frequent and overwhelming.

Medicine

fromHarvard Gazette

It's time to get more comfortable with talking about dying - Harvard Gazette

Most Americans want to talk about death but feel uncomfortable; growing post‑pandemic conversations and palliative resources can improve end‑of‑life communication.

fromBusiness Insider

I was the primary caregiver for my mother until she died. The responsibilities didn't end with her death.

Caregiving extends beyond a person's lifetime through managing their memory, finances, and legacy with the same dignity and respect shown during their life.

Grieving Loss When There's No Clean Goodbye

Ambiguous loss is an unresolved physical or psychological absence that creates chronic uncertainty, frozen grief, and blocked meaning-making by denying clear rituals or closure.

I'm 44 and I haven't cried since my father's funeral three years ago - not because I've healed but because somewhere between the eulogy and the drive home my body decided that was the last time and I've been waiting ever since for the next wave to come and it just won't and the numbness is worse than the grief ever was - Silicon Canals

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk writes in 'The Body Keeps the Score' that trauma doesn't just live in our minds - it reshapes how our bodies respond to emotion. Sometimes, when we experience significant loss, our nervous system essentially decides that feeling is too dangerous and shuts down the whole operation.

Mental health

Did She Die the Way They Say?

Psychological autopsy clarifies equivocal manners of death but lacks standardized protocols, challenging reliability; qualitative forensic mental-state assessments deserve standing.

Why Are We Failing at Endings?

Attachment is a neurobiological imperative that makes separations register as threat, causing messy, survival-focused endings rather than graceful, contained closures.

Psychologists explain that the grief of not having children doesn't follow the stages people expect because there is no single loss to process. It's a recurring absence that resurfaces at every milestone, every holiday, every quiet evening, and the pain isn't that it keeps happening once but that it keeps happening in new forms for the rest of your life. - Silicon Canals

Grief from childlessness is a unique, ongoing loss without a single event or clear moment of acceptance, manifesting through countless ordinary moments that unexpectedly trigger profound emotional weight.

Why the Grief Ripples So Deeply When an Advocate Dies

'They're dead.' In disbelief, my response was unfiltered. 'What?' Followed by the F word. A wave of emotion rushed through me. My chest tightened. My body went cold. I could not immediately find the words to offer condolences, not because I did not feel them deeply, but because inside, my many parts were experiencing a collective shock. When you live with dissociative identity disorder (DID), news like this does not land in one place. It ricochets across all parts within.

Mental health

The Good Deaths of People Who Never Marry

People who had never married 'generally fared as well as, if not better than, married persons.' They also found that people who had no children were no different from parents in the quality of their life in their last month.

Mental health

Inner Death: The Death We Don't Talk About

Childhood physical abuse can trigger nervous system shutdowns causing emotional numbness, identity loss, and long-term patterns like over-functioning, emotional distance, and fear of closeness.

fromenglish.elpais.com