How to find meaning in the face of death

"The psychiatrist William Breitbart lives at the edge of life and death. As chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, Breitbart specializes in end-of-life care for terminally ill cancer patients. For many of his patients, the most pressing question isn’t when they’ll die or how painful death will be. Rather, it’s what makes life meaningful. They are in search of a meaning that cannot be destroyed by death." Is there one? Read on....

The five biggest regrets of the dying

A hospice nurse reports the five regrets that her patients most often shared in their final days. Click here to read about her study.

What is most important in life?

A 75 year Harvard study has discovered the #1 secret to a happy life -- spoiler alert: relationships. Click here to read more....

Viola Davis' Oscar speech celebrates what it means to live a life

"Thank you to the Academy. You know, there's one place that all the people with the greatest potential are gathered. One place and that's the graveyard. People ask me all the time, what kind of stories do you want to tell, Viola? And I say, exhume those bodies. Exhume those stories. The stories of the people who dreamed big and never saw those dreams to fruition. People who fell in love and lost. I became an artist—and thank God I did—because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life." -- Viola Davis

One man's quest to change the way we die

This story on One Man's Quest to Change the Way We Die describes how "B.J. Miller, a doctor and triple amputee, used his own experience to pioneer a new model of palliative care at a small, quirky hospice in San Francisco.

Imagine the quality of care for dementia patients that is possible....

On living

Hospice Chaplain, Kerry Egan, has compiled a book of advice from her patients on how to live. “If there is any great difference between the people who know they are dying and the rest of us, it’s this: They know they’re running out of time. They have more motivation to do the things they want to do, and to become the person they want to become. . . . There’s nothing stopping you from acting with the same urgency the dying feel.” If there is one thing death teaches us, it’s how to live.

Click here to read more in the New York Times review of her book, On Living.