Ben shared his story in April of 2022. In the days since my father’s death, it’s become more and more clear to me how well he planned for the end of his life. He couldn’t have done it better. From the time he was a young man to the day he died, John Griffith was…

Phyllis shared her story in June of 2022. I never met anyone who didn’t like Alan. He was so easy to get along with. In our relationship, there was a lot of comfortable silence and an enormous amount of laughter. I can’t tell you what we laughed about, because it was always at ourselves. For…

Marcia shared her story in October of 2021. My mother, Opal Sloane, approached death the same way she had lived her life: She was breathtakingly practical.  In her late 90s, my mother found that day-to-day living was getting harder and harder. She had always loved gardening, eating out, and using her computer, but carpal tunnel…

Linda shared her story in January of 2023. For three decades, I worked for an organization whose mission is to support adults with disabilities. It was a very rewarding job. But a few years back, I started noticing that my coworkers were bringing me the cups of coffee I had forgotten and left on their…

David White shared his story in December of 2022. Few words do justice to a parent’s request to “please just let me die.” Over the span of 30 years, my mother, Lyn, and I had numerous conversations about her goals and intentions for the end of life. In the 1970s, she attended workshops led by…

Lenore shared her story in January of 2020. In June 2016, my extremely physically-active husband, Brian Kaibel, was diagnosed with ALS. Brian had been a physical trainer, worked in maintenance and security, loved building things, and loved kayaking for weeklong trips, but everything changed quickly. He lost his entire physical being over a period of…

Married almost 49 years, Wendy Soderlund and Edward Pultz sensed signs of Wendy’s dementia long before seeking an official diagnosis in 2021. “It feels like something I’ve just known for a long time,” says Wendy. My mother had dementia, as did her father, and his mother, my great-grandmother.  According to family history, she became a…

When facing a terminal prognosis, the goal of good end-of-life care is to provide as much physical and emotional comfort as possible. The following options focus on comfort, dignity and quality of life, not curing illness. For many, it is reassuring just to know that options exist. There is no one right answer or choice;…

Kari Alice provided Compassion & Choices her story in June of 2020. In March, I was told that I have lung cancer and, without treatment, only have a year to live. I have made the decision to not have chemo, radiation, or immunotherapy. I am unwilling to exchange my quality of life for an extra…

Karen and Robert shared their story in April of 2020. In July 2019, our father—J. Lindsley Foote—made one of the most courageous decisions of his life—to stop eating and drinking to end his unbearable suffering. Our dad had suffered increasing pain for many years due to spinal stenosis, which had started over 20 years earlier….