Karen Wyatt MD is a family physician and the founder of End of Life University (eolupodcast.com). She spent much of her 25 year medical career working with patients in challenging settings, such as hospice, nursing homes and indigent clinics. In a blog post, Dr. Wyatt writes: These are the fundamental truths of death and dying that should be taught to every…
Sarah Kerr is a death doula and educator based in Victoria. This is a transcript from her video. As a death doula, I help dying people and their families navigate endings. I help them to navigate the loss of something incredibly precious – of relationships, of love in this physical dimension. It’s a huge process of saying goodbye, and of…
If you’re asked to be an executor, ensure you understand what is requested before accepting. Consider the following: What is your health like? Your abilities? Do you have the skills needed to do this job? How complex is the estate? What is the value of the assets? The higher the value, the more potential for problems (but the higher your…
Philip Simmons died 10 years after his diagnosis of ALS, at the age of 45. During this period of his life, he wrote the book Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life. Philip Simmons wrote, “Only by letting go our grip on all that we ordinarily find most precious—our achievements, our plans, our loved ones, our very selves—can we…
Following is the script from a School of Life YouTube video titled Reasons to Remember Death. The School of Life is a global organization helping people to lead more fulfilled lives through useful resources and tools. The fast-paced video is directed to those of us who are not actively dying. This is about death, our death, and how useful it…
The five stages of grief were first identified by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969 as Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Grief isn’t a linear process. It isn’t as if we experience stage one, followed by stage two, etc. When we’re struck by grief, we’re all over the map, consumed by one major feeling and cycling through different aspects, moment by…
Quadra island Way To Go works to integrate death as a natural part of community life by initiating conversations, providing education, and encouraging people to plan ahead on issues related to end-of-life, and empowering, guiding, and supporting the practice and process of caring for our own dead and dying, in community. Way To Go began on Quadra in 2017, inspired…
This information was mainly extracted from a video by Sarah Kerr from the Centre for Sacred Death Care. A funeral service is a focused intentional ritual that facilitates healing. When done well, it serves the person who has died, the close family and friends, and the larger community. This requires a structure able to hold the depth of grief and…
Although the terms are often used interchangeably, a casket is shaped like a box, while a coffin is tapered and has six sides rather than four. To shroud a body simply means to wrap it in cloth. Although caskets are often purchased from a funeral home, they can be built by friends or family, custom made on the island, ordered…
A Way To Go intention, within and for our community, is ‘death as part of life’. Death is often difficult, scary, and overwhelming. It is natural for us to want to distance ourselves from the pain of it, and there is an underlying belief in our culture that suffering can be avoided. It takes a lot of courage, and usually…