End of Life Musings - July 2025
A Newsletter for our End of Life Conversations podcast community
Welcome to the July issue of our monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.
Thank you to all our subscribers, podcast guests, students, and collaborators for helping to normalize conversations about end-of-life care.
We hope you will subscribe, spread the word, and let us know if you have a story, article, or event to share.
Podcast Insights
Our fourth season is off to a terrific start.
We posted a video episode where we reviewed all of the fantastic people we met in the third season.
And we’ve posted seven more episodes in Season four, including:
Grief training for Spiritual Directors with Timothy Arsenault
The role of art in grief work with Dr. Sheila K. Collins
Texting With a Friend Who Has Died with Jay Deitcher
Male emotional responses to loss with Seth Samuels
Every Moment is a Death with Sam Lee Zemke
Using Taxidermy Puppets for Storytelling with Kilah Storm
Self-Care for Caregivers with Christine Gautreaux
Meaningful, affordable, and environmentally friendly deathcare with Liz Dunnebacke
We have many more phenomenal guests lined up for future episodes this season. Stay tuned, share with your community, and let us know if you or someone you know has a story to share!
Announcements and Events
Ongoing Inclusive End-of-Life, Death & Grief Care Education with Joél Simone Maldonado, The Grave Woman.
New Book by Gary Sturgis entitled: ‘The SURVIVING GRIEF Workbook’.
A companion book to his bestselling book: ‘SURVIVING GRIEF - 365 DAYS A YEAR’.
Stay Ready: An In-Depth End-of-Life Planning Course - Our friend Neshia Alaovae (she/her) will share a virtual end-of-life planning course. Beginning on Wednesday, August 20th, it will run weekly until Wednesday, September 24th.
The saying goes, “If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.” Let's get and stay ready for our deaths. This six-week virtual workshop brings together the information and observations Neshia has been learning as a death worker since 2012. The goal is to provide an empowering, non-judgmental space for you to learn about your end-of-life rights, intentionally prepare for death, and, ultimately, live your fullest life.
Another of our excellent guests, Gail Rubin, is launching a Substack column called “Mortality Movies with The Doyenne of Death.” She’ll be discussing films and TV shows that can help start conversations about end-of-life issues.
Each post will include a video with Gail showing clips from selected movies and talking about the lessons we can learn from these films. In the first post, a 3-minute compilation of 17 film and TV clips about death, grief, funerals, and movies will be featured. Correctly identify them all and email your list to Gail@agoodgoodbye.com to win a “Talking about sex won’t make you pregnant, talking about funerals won’t make you dead.” T-shirt!
Before You Go - End of Life Planning Workshop
Saturday, July 26, 2025 - On Zoom from 11 AM to 1 PM Pacific Time
“We’re all going to die, and we don’t know when…” says my friend and mentor, Rev. Bodhi Be, who runs a non-profit green funeral home.
Given that essential and poignant truth, there are many things we can do to prepare ourselves and save our loved ones time and stress when that time comes.
The class will focus on the information necessary to make informed decisions regarding end-of-life care. These include the various documents that explicitly guide family and friends in supporting the choices you make. We will explore legal documentation, practical considerations, relational networks, wishes for your memorial, the disposition of your body, and much more. This information is valuable to everyone, regardless of age or health status.
From Doorway Into Light - Facing Death, Nourishing Life
Date/time: September 19-November 3. This 7-week online training meets 2 times each week for 2 hours (14 classes total). Mondays and Thursdays 10 am-12 pm Hawaii Time
Description: Reverend Bodhi Be and his team will guide us in deepening our relationships with death and dying, as well as to a deeper meaning and purpose in our lives. This training is for all those who wish to prepare for their dying time and their death, those who may care for a dying loved one, those who currently work in the fields of caring for the dying and their families, those wishing to or are being called to work in these fields, and those who care about the world.
Essays/Articles
"I have been walking in the woods, and have lain down on the ground to rest. It is the middle of October, and around me, all through the woods, the leaves are quietly sifting down. The newly fallen leaves make a dry, comfortable bed, and I lie easy, coming to rest within myself as I seem to do nowadays only when I am in the woods.
And now, a leaf, spiraling down in wild flight, lands on my shirt at about the third button below the collar. At first I am bemused and mystified by the coincidence – that the leaf should have hung, weighted and shaped, so ready to fall, so nudged loose and slanted by the breeze, as to fall where by the same delicacy of circumstance, happened to be lying. The event, among all its ramifying causes and considerations, and finally its mysteries, begins to take on the magnitude of history. Portent begins to dwell in it.
And suddenly I apprehend in it the dark proposal of the ground. Under the fallen leaf my breastbone burns with imminent decay. Other leaves fall. My body begins its long shudder into humus. I feel my substance escape me, carried into the mold by beetles and worms. Days, winds, seasons pass over me as I sink under the leaves. For a time, only sight is left me, a passive awareness of the sky overhead, birds crossing, the mazed interreaching of the treetops, the leaves falling – and then, that, too, sinks away. It is acceptable to me, and I am at peace.
When I move to go, it is as though I rise up out of the world."
Wendell Berry from A Native Hill, 1969
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Poetry
I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There’s nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began,—
I loved my friend.
~Langston Hughes