Help Desk from the New York Times Book Review: How to grieve and how to die.

Or let nature help you:
Take a walk or make a garden.

Okay, there are economic reasons for making the most of life while encouraging a shorter death watch. The Economist April 29, 2017 admonishes that living as long as possible isn't really the best way to go.

There are also reasons of human kindness and love.  The bar graph accompanying What Matters Most in the same edition of the weekly news magazine is not living as long as possible.  Only about 17% of Japanese, 40% Italians and 45% Americans want to live as long as possible.  Maybe they've seen and experienced enough with up-close views of the end-stage suffering still permitted in countries that don't understand the concept "death with dignity".

~

Death With Dignity Locations in the U.S.A.

• California (End of Life Option Act; 2016)
• Colorado (End of Life Options Act; 2016)
• District of Columbia (Death with Dignity Act; 2017)
• Oregon (Oregon Death with Dignity Act; 1994/1997)
• Vermont (Patient Choice and Control at the End of Life Act; 2013)
• Washington (Washington Death with Dignity Act; 2008)     Source: https://www.deathwithdignity.org/learn/death-with-dignity-acts/

Jenny Diski

Jenny Diski was a fine and interesting writer.  Mentored and substitute-mothered by Doris Lessing, Ms. Diski was a rebel who spoke to my mind and heart.  Hah! She spoke to my depressive, obsessive, insecure core. What matters is how carefully she documented her death with inspired honesty.
London Review of Books, 19 November 2015.


Jenny Diski Obituary 

Oh no, not buried alive!!!!!!!

TEN Horrifying Premature Burials.  Only 10?

Open Grave, the movie

I started writing Open Grave as a zine-newsletter in 1978.  First story featured a grave digger who was transporting concrete grave liners in Florida.   Online version of  Open Grave started in 2008.

Now there's a movie called Open Grave.  

And a band called Open Grave.

Universal subject.

Historic Congressional Cemetery, Washington DC

Death in Tuscany

I am lying on a hillside in Tuscany pretending to be dead.  My body cells merge with the grass and dirt.  I would be the organic being I strive to be.  A wind courses through the trees, the few left by  industrious firewood harvesters.  They are wise enough to leave shade trees, well-spaced saplings and venerable flowering fruit trees.  

An octopus-shaped cloud obscures the sun.  A few minutes ago it was a flying goddess with a swan on her back.  The clothes under my body would be better on, but then have buried me naked so I know I am alive.