Jadyn Erin Larky, an 11-year-old girl from the Columbus, Ohio suburb of Bexley, had only just begun her summer at Camp Livingston, one of the country’s oldest active Jewish summer camps. The camp is located in a densely forested area near the Ohio River in southeastern Indiana, and has a beautiful lake on its property….
I recently bought my grave because my wife, 10 years my junior and exceedingly practical, has been urging me to decide what I want concerning my ultimate disposal. Debbie has not failed to notice, as I approach my 70th birthday, that time may be nigh. She prefers I be cremated, but I have been insistent…
Over the past three years, filmmaker Josh Seftel has filmed a murder, a suicide and a stroke. He has filmed obesity, loneliness, homelessness and alcoholism. And a sad birthday party or two. The subject of these scenes is always the same: photographer Philip Toledano, who plagued by fears of his own mortality, decided to create…
“When your parents are dying, it’s not like a baby, where people want to come over and play with the baby. Somebody comes over and brings you a little onesie or stretchy…. What are they going to do — bring Depends? Or a case of Ensure?” That’s Roz Chast, 59, perhaps best known for her…
Brooches and wreaths made of carefully coiled human hair. Images of life-size, ultra-realistic models of dead, naked women — their supine bodies arranged in what look like post-coital poses, but with their abdomens sliced open and organs spilling out. Death masks hundreds of years old that look like people standing next to you. This is…
Thinkstock Editor’s Note: The following 2011 Yom Kippur sermon by Jack Moline has been edited for style and length. Below, you will find a brief survey allowing you to send us your end-of-life stories, a selection of which may be published. We hope to prompt conversation on that most difficult question for the living: How…
Scroll down to tell us your story about making an end-of-life decision for a loved one. Signing the papers to officially place my father into hospice care was among the most difficult tasks of my life. But it was also one of the most gratifying. Long before the day arrived, I had begun carrying a…
Sylvia Sodden lay on life support in a critical care room in Brooklyn when her health care proxy made the hardest choice: He decided to end her life. But before any machines could be unplugged, her relatives turned to Chayim Aruchim, a program that helps ultra-Orthodox Jews navigate end-of-life care. Chayim Aruchim referred the family…
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