{"quotes":[{"text":"At the end of life, your reward in heaven will not be proportional to the role you played on earth, but how faithful you played it. Be faithful in every little role you are to play; it'll lead you to a greater reward! Faithfulness is key!","author":"Israelmore Ayivor","tags":["accomplish","accomplishment","achieve","achievement","earth","end-of-life","faithful","faithfulness","fight-a-good-fight","food-for-thought","fulfill","fulfillment","israelmore-ayivor","journey","key","lead","life","little","play-your-role","reward","role","success","successful"],"id":22136,"author_id":"Israelmore+Ayivor"},{"text":"Without guidance and support for patients and families approaching death, there may be unnecessary conflict, confusion, and trauma that linger long after the passing of a loved one.","author":"Lisa J. Shultz","tags":["approaching-death","death","death-and-dying","death-of-a-loved-one","end-of-life","passing","passing-away","support","supporting-others"],"id":25218,"author_id":"Lisa+J.+Shultz"},{"text":"What would I have wanted to say if I had had the opportunity to see him one more time? I would like to think that I would have kept it simple and said, “I love you,” then just held his hand in silence, letting that thought linger in the space of the time we had left together.","author":"Lisa J. Shultz","tags":["death-and-dying","deathbed","end-of-life","i-love-you","time-to-let-go","time-to-say-goodbye"],"id":32516,"author_id":"Lisa+J.+Shultz"},{"text":"By seizing every opportunity for kindness, forgiveness, healing, and love that crosses my path each day, I hope that my death, although perhaps sad for some, will be gracefully concluded.","author":"Lisa J. Shultz","tags":["conclusion","death","dying","dying-well","end-of-life","forgiveness","graceful","healing","kindness","love"],"id":38248,"author_id":"Lisa+J.+Shultz"},{"text":"In the end, if we don't have God we don't have anything other than an end.","author":"Craig D. Lounsbrough","tags":["christianity","concluded","cross","death","dying","end","end-of-life","god","jesus","passing"],"id":45403,"author_id":"Craig+D.+Lounsbrough"},{"text":"I am constantly mystified by what John ends up remembering… I just don’t understand why he’s able to hang on to information like that, while so many other more important memories evaporate. Then again, I suppose so much of what stays with us is often insignificant. The memories we take to the ends of our lives have no real rhyme or reason, especially when you think of the endless things that you do over the course of a day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime. All the cups of coffee, hand-washings, changes of clothes, lunches, goings to the bathroom, headaches, naps, walks to school, trips to the grocery store, conversations about the weather—all the things so unimportant they should be immediately forgotten. Yet they aren’t. I often think of the Chinese red bathrobe I had when I was twenty-seven years old; the sound of our first cat Charlie’s feet on the linoleum of our old house; the hot rarefied air around aluminum pot the moment before the kernels of popcorn burst open. I think of these things as often as I think about getting married or giving birth or the end of the Second World War. What is truly amazing is that before you know it, sixty years go by and you can remember maybe eight or nine important events, along with a thousand meaningless ones. How can that be?You want to think there’s a pattern to it all because it makes you feel better, gives you some sense of a reason why we’re here, but there really isn’t any. People look for God in these patterns, these reasons, but only because they don’t know where else to look.Things happen to us: some of it important, most of it not, and a little of it stays with us till the end. What stays after that? I’ll be damned if I know.(pp.174-175).","author":"Michael Zadoorian","tags":["after-death","aging","end-of-life","end-of-life-musings","lifetime","meaningful-life","memories","memory","memory-loss","moments","ordinary-life","patterns","reason","time","time-passing"],"id":48060,"author_id":"Michael+Zadoorian"},{"text":"In the kitchen, her family nibbled Helen’s lemon squares. Melanie urged brownies on the nurses. “Take these,” she told Lorraine. “We can’t eat them all, but Helen won’t stop baking.”“Sweetheart,” Lorraine said, “everybody mourns in her own way.”Helen mourned her sister deeply. She arrived each day with shopping bags. Her cake was tender with sliced apples, but her almond cookies crumbled at the touch. Her pecan bars were awful, sticky-sweet and hard enough to break your teeth. They remained untouched in the dining room, because Helen never threw good food away.","author":"Allegra Goodman","tags":["baking","end-of-life","grief","loss","mourning"],"id":84108,"author_id":"Allegra+Goodman"},{"text":"I entered the picture in the eleventh hour as a guide to the exit of his life. I navigated as best I could the role of end-of-life shepherd—a journey that I had never taken before. I have to forgive myself for what I did not know. And I have to forgive him for the times that he felt unequipped to deal with the unknown.","author":"Lisa J. Shultz","tags":["eleventh-hour","end-of-life","end-of-life-care","end-of-life-issues","forgive","forgive-me","forgiveness"],"id":89086,"author_id":"Lisa+J.+Shultz"},{"text":"Death is not the end of life but the beginning of eternal life.","author":"Debasish Mridha","tags":["death","debasish","debasish-mridha","end-of-life","eternal-life","mridha","philosophy"],"id":96540,"author_id":"Debasish+Mridha"},{"text":"When I reflect on the stories of death supported by hospice care and contrast it with our story depicting an absence of support, I find myself dealing with envy and anger. I have channeled those emotions into this book with the hope that hearing our story might give someone else a chance to create a better ending to the life of a loved one.","author":"Lisa J. Shultz","tags":["death","death-and-dying","death-of-a-loved-one","end-of-life","end-of-life-care","end-of-life-issues","hospice","hospice-care"],"id":99381,"author_id":"Lisa+J.+Shultz"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":37,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}