“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald. The accompanying graph shows one way that they are different. The spend a ton more money at the end of life. Not that it gets them anywhere. The New York Times reports on a paper than… [Read more…]
July 19, 2010
For the first time ever, or at least since statisticians have been keeping track, there are more people in the job market who are older than 65 than those between 16 and 19. The numbers represented in the nearby graph show 12-month averages, so this is not a short-term accounting blip. The New York Times… [Read more…]
July 13, 2010
My wife’s grandmother recently passed away. In a conversation today about the upcoming funeral, our 5 year old daughter highlighted one of the beautiful aspects of Christian dying, in an exchange something like this.
June 30, 2010
Women are at the forefront of one of the most fundamental transformations of the 21st century. For the first time in human history, the number of people older than 65 will be larger than those under age 5. Demographers say that the fastest growing age group is those older than 85. One study found that… [Read more…]
June 21, 2010
I’m late getting to reading my subscription to The Atlantic, so I’ve only just read this article from the April issue: Letting Go of My Father. It’s about the author’s descent as he suddenly discovered that his father was badly in need of assistance because of his Parkinson’s. Living in Phoenix, while the author lived… [Read more…]
June 17, 2010
Good or bad, right or wrong, caring for elderly family members usually falls to the women in a family. As a man, I can see why this would be, though I certainly think that men would do well to take up some more of the caregiving responsibility. It is important, even holy, work. And it’s… [Read more…]
June 13, 2010
More and more workers are fighting back against employers who are unsympathetic when they need time off to care for family members. “In the past 10 years, the number of such suits [against employers] has quadrupled and many have been successful,” according to the Center for WorkLife Law.
June 11, 2010
I’ve been asked a number of times since The Art of Dying was released how I could have ended up writing it. I look too young, people have said. Well, there are a number of quick responses to that. As a hospice volunteer, I’ve been around dying people a considerable amount, and I’ve learned a… [Read more…]
May 25, 2010
Yes, Christ defeated death on the Cross, but there’s plenty of people who hope to do better and not die at all. A couple news pieces recently about people who hope to end death: Arakawa, Whose Art Tried to Halt Aging, Dies at 73 Arakawa, a Japanese-born conceptual artist and designer, who with his wife,… [Read more…]
May 17, 2010
Betty White attracted 12 million viewers to Saturday Night Live two weeks ago. According to critics, this was “a staggering number on a Saturday night when prime-time network shows have trouble reaching a third as many people — and this number came during hours when television usage is a fraction of what it is in… [Read more…]
July 21, 2010
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