Hopeful Choices: Inviting Conversations about Dying and Death

I’m President of The Hospice Foundation for Jefferson HealthCare, and, wearing that “hat”, I want to say that I deeply believe we have an urgent and vital ministry, inside and outside church walls, to open up and invite conversations about dying and death and the thoughtful planning needed for the end-of-life journey we hope to make. It’s a ministry I think has remained in the shadows for too long. We have hopeful gifts to offer to all the people in our communities if we are willing to invite and engage them in planning, sooner rather than later, their desired “walk through the valley of the shadows of death”.

Elisbeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying, says “Mankind’s greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.”

Yes, indeed. That we will die is a fact, and one that we don’t easily face or talk about. We need lessons in how to do so. How we hope to die can be shaped by choices we make. If we don’t make them, preferably in conversation with our loved ones, they will be made for us.

I offer you one resource (there are many) and invite you to spend some thoughtful time with the questions posed by www.engagewithgrace.org. We all have choices to make for the journey of a lifetime from here to eternity. Now is the time.


~ MaryAnn