Carrie Rowell still misses the 7 a.m. phone calls from her father, who died six years ago. He would use her nickname, “Toots,” or ask, “Hey, babe, how’s your morning going?” “I would give anything to hear that again,” Rowell said. But interacting with a version of a departed loved one is now more accessible Read more
Bella Montoya was admitted to hospital earlier in June after she suffered a stroke. She didn’t respond to treatment; a doctor declared her dead and her family held a wake. Reports say she woke up in her coffin and knocked on the lid, when it was open, relatives were stunned to find her alive and Read more
The Death Cafe movement is heading to Manawatū with the first meeting on June 17. Creating a space to talk about death is the aim of the group, says facilitator Aingie Miller, who wants to take the discomfort out of conversations. “I believe that the more that we talk about death, the more comfortable we Read more
Human composting has just become a post-life option in California. California’s governor on Sunday signed a bill allowing the process of converting bodies into soil. Despite opposition from the State’s Catholic bishops, the law will take effect in 2027 At present, burial, cremation and alkaline hydrolysis are the only death-care choices available in the Golden Read more
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s saga The Lord of the Rings Treebeard the Ent (a tree herder) tells the hobbits Merry and Pippin of the estrangement of the Ents and Entwives. Their differing views of happiness had moved them farther and farther apart until they lost all contact with each other to the loss of both since Read more
A conversation with the 44-year-old bishop Bishop Pavlo Honcharuk of the Ukraine Latin diocese of Kharkiv – Zaporizhzhia. Honcharuk describes life in his diocese at the moment. Could you describe the situation in your diocese, which has become the main theatre of this terrible war? Our Church is alive and active! Priests and faithful are Read more
Last Thursday afternoon, ostensibly on holiday in the Wairarapa, I sat with my husband on a couch that didn’t belong to us, in a house that wasn’t ours, and watched his mum say goodbye to her brother on the same TV we’d been glued to the night before watching US election coverage. The same TV Read more
The risk of dying from COVID-19 is at least 50% higher for Māori than New Zealanders from European backgrounds, according to our study published 4 September 2020. Māori and Pacific populations are historically at greater risk of hospitalisation and death from pandemics. During the 2009 influenza pandemic, the rate of infection for Māori was twice Read more
There has never been a more critical time than now to think about who you would want to speak up for you should you become sick and dying, and what matters to you most. “Contemplating one’s death may be the most profound form of meditation. Death is the backdrop of life, and at times like Read more
The crypt chapel in the Church of Holy Mary of the Conception in Rome is composed completely of human bones, hanging lanterns and all. While the chapel is some “weird Catholic stuff,” to say the least, it does present a pressing and unavoidable lesson: that our lives are short and that we are all going Read more