What a wonderful idea! The Reflected Legacy project with artist Flutter Lyon has been started to bring comfort, support and creativity to the Palliative Care Ward at Liverpool Hospital,Sydney. The goal is to transform a grey hospital ward with colour and conversation, and capture the life stories of people who … Read more
“Oh dear!” Linda Hansen groaned as she looked at yesterday’s goodgrief60.wordpress.com posting. Linda is the Executive Officer of Palliative Care NSW and every time a story comes out, like the one I posted yesterday, she frets that the good people working in palliative care will feel undervalued. That posting picked … Read more
The Conversation Project is dedicated to helping people talk about their wishes for end-of-life care. Statistics show that everything Ellen Goodman says about the American experience is the same in Australia. That is, we have the same gap between the death people say they want and the death they have. … Read more
by Katherine Delaney That the captain was a woman with the first name of Rowena. That the mother behind me exhorting up, up, up in a high voice to her young child sounded like she was trying to re-assure herself. That I comforted myself by knowing that the fact that … Read more
Dying To Know Day is an annual day of action dedicated to bringing to life conversations and community actions around death, dying and bereavement. D2KDay launched in 2013 and has seen 285 events and has sparked thousands of conversations about death, dying and bereavement. Go to the Dying To … Read more
~~~ “About 70% of Australians have specific wishes about their end of life care but very few get to put these into practice” says Independent Patient Supporter & Advocate, Dorothy Kamaker. “In the United States it’s estimated that between 25 to 30 per cent of people achieve these wishes but … Read more
Journeys of the Heart by Jodi Rose. Arbon Publishing. After losing her husband, the famous Australian swimmer Murray Rose, Jodi searched out the stories of other carers who were there for those they loved, supporting them until they died. Those interviews turned into this collection of stories. The subtitle of … Read more
Today I’m remembering my brother Julian, who was killed this day five years ago, in a motor-cycle accident near his country property. As our brother, Damian, said in his eulogy for him; “There was an explosion of light too beautiful, and our dear Julian was shot into the Heavens, where … Read more
Good Grief has gone fishing! We’re taking a short summer holiday. Look forward to seeing you again in 2017.
When Mark’s partner Jane died, he didn’t expect the reaction of her family.
If an expected death happens in the middle of the night definitely wait until morning…
“Grief is the unavoidable consequence of ‘letting go’,” says Catholic priest Monsignor Tony Doherty. Tony has sat with families and friends at the bedside of the dying on many occasions during his 50 years as a priest. “One of life’s fundamental human equations goes like this: the more you … Read more
When does grief become abnormal? And if we don’t see it in medical terms soon enough, do we lose chances to help?
When my friend Susan’s mother Jean was cremated at Leura Memorial Gardens in Autumn this year, her family used lots of flowers and foliage from her garden in the Blue Mountains of NSW to adorn her coffin. It was a way of expressing something about Jean, who’d always loved the … Read more
John Faine, then of ABC Melbourne, interviewed Susan Wyndham, Margaret Rice and Chris Hall on 24 October, 2013. That interview is just as relevant today as it was back then. Today I planted cuttings from my father’s garden to remind me of him. I had taken them from his garden … Read more
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