Mental Health - Widower Experience (WX)

Sharon Osbourne and her husband Ozzy Osbourne talked once again about their plan to pass away by Medical aid in dying (MAID), if their physical and mental health takes a severe decline. MAID is an option to pass away in dignity - an option which offers the alternative get help from a physician, providing a competent adult with a terminal illness with a prescription for a lethal dose of a drug at the request of the patient, which the patient intends to use to end his or her life., if their physical and mental health takes a severe decline. Sharon’s strong view on having an assisted death is largely influenced by watching her father suffering for so long from Alzheimer’s disease before his death in 2007. Then, in 2014, Ozzy Osbourne spoke of his desire to die by medically assisted suicide in the case of any “life-threatening condition.” “ If I can’t live my life the way I’m living it now – and I don’t mean financially – then that’s it...[Switzerland], ” Ozzy mentioned. “ If I ca...

... that is a quote from the comedy, medical drama sitcom series Scrubs. And I will link you to the recording at the end of this article. And one or two might think - isn't this blog about life, death and grieving, why mentioning and linking to a sitcom series - and my answer is YES - I hear you. And here comes the 'but' or 'because'. As I firmly believe that we have to take each of the three aspect seriously; I firmly believe or I know that the bandwidth is broad and deep and far away from each other but in the very next moment they are close, very close and even can become congruent.  Death, end of life, serious illness and humor Curt Goetz, who was a Swiss German writer, actor and film director once said: "Anyone who knew how to die with humor would have reached the highest level of culture" I guess my wife didn't knew this quote. But she lived that way, lived her last weeks, days and hours to her very last second. We should or have to remember , wh...

I do and we all should accept death as inevitable. I do not fear death. On the one hand that is likely due to my strong belief in an afterlife - I will meet my wife, all my dogs, our horses and cat and all nice people on the 'other side' - for me it is a small house at the Klondike. And on the other hand - I guess that the fear of death follows from the fear of life. A wo/man who lives fully, lived honesty to her/himself is prepared to pass away at any time - that's how I lived and live. So many people are so wrapped up in the material things in life that they frequently overlook the most important moments in their lives - and joy and happiness . Don’t be afraid to live life to the fullest because life is short and things might change ahead of schedule or quicker than one prefer or expect. Instead of living in the past or in regrets ( as I outlined a few days ago ), enjoy what is now. Allow yourself to be satisfied with what makes you happy. It is not a good idea to let oth...

Grief is a part of us from the death-day onward and we carry it with us as long as we live. That doesn't mean we're standing still - the grief will only accompany us from now on.  And it would be nice and great when the people around the griefer let them feel that way and just acknowledge it. With a smile and love. And please never forget: the grief stays with you. The grief takes different forms; it gets quieter and after a while it doesn't afflict, scare and put stress and pressure on us that much anymore. But grief doesn't go away anymore - it will stay with us - it stays with us as the good memories of living with our loved ones - who we had to let go.       

We can only grieve for something or someone  who we loved before. Love can exist without grief - but  grief can only exist by love - but finally one will not exist without the other. Grief asks us to be kind, to ourselves and to others. It demands respect, mindfulness and awareness. Everybody experiences loss, whether it's the loss of a loved one, the ending of a romantic relationship, or any sort of a serious setback in life. The process of dealing with that grief often involves mourning "rituals" that vary across different times and cultures. How ever you do such grief rituals - they will be comforting acts - if they mean something to the individual person.  Such rituals reduce fears and give stability in a new reality. In order to ... process the loss of people to feel the closeness and connection with the deceased to express love and affection for the deceased ... acts of mourning are of elementary importance It is extremely important to allow these emotions, giving t...

Elaine Fong's mother wanted was a peaceful end of life. What she received instead became a fight for the right to decide when. Fong shares the heart-rending journey to honor her mother's choice for a death with dignity -- and reflects on the need to explore our relationship to dying so that we may redesign this final and most universal of human experiences.

Helen O'Shaughnessey shares her touching and insightful experiences, on the importance of "end of life choice," in this 13 minute TEDx Talk.  Helen O'Shaughnessey worked as nurse and midwife. She is a  I a humanist and she believe that the greatest human right and the greatest human freedom is to be able to live and die according to one's own beliefs and desires. I like how she put her thoughts together and what she has to share regarding her experience and thought of dying with dignity: The importance of choice at end of life ...

In many countries, there is a divisive public controversy over the moral, ethical, and legal issues of death with dignity. On the one hand, some people view 'death with dignity' as taking a life – murder – even though the person being “murdered” has little or no quality of life, they know this quality of life will get poorer, and they want to die with dignity, while they are still of a sane mind. Other people say that this sick and dying person has the right to choose to die with dignity, and that everyone has the self-determination, autonomy and dignity help-to-live and right-to-die - and that this freedom is a basic human right. First of all I want to stress that we must do anything and everything what we can do in order to improve others life, but we must not leave people alone - people who are in chronic pain, suffer pain, loosing abilities, loosing sovereignty and autonomy of their life. Yes, Our attention must be focused on life, and our efforts must be toward improving ...

Nobody wonders when and why someone thinks her/his life is good, joyful or worth living. But if someone mentions that she or he would rather be dead - most often there is no understanding or interest at all - all too often even the immediate family, relatives or friends do not want to know the why. They do not want to understand that it is an individual and unique perspective. There are people who have already killed themselves - who, in the opinion of most other people, had not the slightest reason to do so. While on the other hand many seriously ill and severely disabled people fight tenaciously and persistently for their lives or for a better quality of life.  Whether a life is worth living obviously depends not only on external, objective factors.  I firmly believe that the understanding whether life is worth living depends much more or completely on the inner attitude and understand one's own live and dignity. And yes there can be psychosocial factors, depression and illn...

Assistance in Dying with Dignity There are different forms of assistance in dying. Passive euthanasia - Allowing to die by forgoing life-prolonging medical treatment or high-dose, life-shortening pain treatment, such as morphine (indirect euthanasia), are forms of euthanasia that a patient can make binding in a good living will.  Active euthanasia - Killing on demand, in which a doctor injects a lethal substance into the patient at his request is prohibited in Germany and in Switzerland.  Assisted suicide or suicide assistance (by physicians or others) with a self-determined end of life - is expressly permitted – and even declared a fundamental right by the Federal Constitutional Court. In contrast with the different forms of “euthanasia”, the decision-making process remains with the person (as outlined below) who wishes to end their own life. The patient decides on the end of their life and intentionally brings about his/her own death. In Germany and a few other countries, th...

Dealing with a topic like death and dying is not easy for most people. Especially when it comes to death and dying in their personal environment, many people don't know at all how to deal with it. But that was not always the case, because there were times when death was, so to speak, a constant companion of people. Today we don't come into contact with death that much as our ancestors in the past. There are several reasons one is, the general life expectancy of people is increasing due to improved living conditions and modern medicine.  The global life expectancy at birth for women is 75 years old and for men, it’s 70 years old. However, in America, the average life expectancy for women is 81 years and for men 77 years. On average, a woman lives 82 years and a man only 76 years in Germany. In the erstwhile centenaries things were quite different. On average, the people in previous years of the turn-of-the-century 1891-1900 men only became 40 years old and women 44 years old in...

We simply cannot influence that we die - but we can eventually influence how we die. But what we can influence for sure is how we deal with it. I firmly believe that living with self-awareness means - above all - to pause for a moment from time to time - pause to think  and listening to what someone actually wants in life - what someone loves - what someone wants.  Everyone is individual - every life is individual. Everyone has their own definition of what is a fulfilled, good day - what is a fulfilled and good life - positive challenges, experiences, goals ... and especially other people and their own family who fulfill their life. I deeply believe that it is about listening to yourself - and asking ourselves again and again - what makes us happy, what is important or what does someone not want to regret. I wish everyone that they can follow their heart - perhaps you can make a difference here and there - perhaps you can plant a 'seed' for the benefit of others or even for hu...

Now more than half a year after my wife left / died with dignity. I learned for myself how to see grief - this is certainly not generally applicable, but maybe one or two will find their way to deal with grieving and mourning. Grief is the visibility, feeling of love, often a huge deep love for a person who died, a beloved one who has gone and is no longer tangible. Love stays and.... Bang! Pow! ... the other one of your love is gone - but love remains. One feels the love / is even more overflowing with love than before.  The longer you are with another person, love changes into a very strong fabric / structure of trust, respect, cohesion and emotional chaos. When the other person is gone, the emotional chaos remains and unexpectedly and out of the blue this 'love' is back - back in your heart and in every part of your body. But what now? Now there was no one left to say that you love the other! No one else is around - to whom you can give or show this love! I was told I could ...

Telling family, relatives and friends that one would like to die is not easy. And it is one of the most challenging, saddest and therefore most stressful tasks that you can imagine - but writing a letter to your partner, family and friends is helpful for really everyone - as it is the path to awareness and self-awareness. When it comes to dying - everyone wishes it would never happened to them.  My wife 'wrote' such an letter and explained why she want to die, want to die with dignity. As she was not anymore able to type it on her own - she did it together with her best girl friend - and they met exactly ten times to note it down - then her girl friend copied the letter out fair. The final version was 4 pages long. The first person (beside of myself) who read it was her mother. And really everyone was happy to hear, to read my wife's own words, her thoughts why she loved to live and what she loved - and to understand why her life is no life anymore - just existing - loosing...

Finding orientation is a challenge in a world full of different and  varying  values and cultures. One possibility might lies in personal and collective reflection about the values that guide us and the different cultures in which we live. What kind of life is dignified? What is dying with dignity? But sooner or later a much bigger problem arises: Who judges what is  dignified for  human? Each person for himself? A cultural community? Ethics experts? State institutions? Churches or religious community? Each of the named seems on the one hand to be overwhelmed by answering this - on the other hand, there are institutions that demand general validity.  Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road of life someone else. Everyone must travel and define the road themself. It is not far. It is within reach. If not work on it . because you have been on it since you were born. You should know which places and how you want to visit them - and if the road of life is getting...

Grief is grief - Full Stop ! The reasons for mourning are as manifold and diverse as the mourning itself. A loved one has died. A lifelong dream has burst. Or a relationship has failed - and much else. All of these crises are serious. They are not the fly in the ointment, an inconvenience, or unpleasantness in life. There are situations in life that shake our foundations. A time in life hat frightens us, makes us angry and also makes us grieve. Feel sorrow for unspoken things. Mourning for lost opportunities. Mourning for a person who meant so much to you. Mourning is serious because we have to rearrange our circumstances. When a person is absent, they are absent - there is nothing to gloss over or to whitewash. I am happy that I never heard something like "Hey, it'll be fine" is neither appropriate nor helpful. From my point of view, grief simply has its right to exist or in other words another valley in life we have to go through. Grief has and must have its time...

If you think about dying with dignity - you might have in mind to take that final choice out of the hands of a 'higher power' and putting it squarely in your hands. To die at a good place, or as my wife did, at home in her own comfortable lounge chair with loved ones is a good final moment. It’s about the quality of life, not the quantity of life. And we as intelligent beings should be able to make those choices ourselves, not some stranger who knows nothing about us. But in order to that - you have to talk to your spouse, your family and friends. And I firmly suggest to start to compose a piece of writing. Make up your mind (and this may surprise you) about the good and positive things in your life ... ... what you want ... what you love, ... what makes YOUR life worth living, ... where, when and how do YOU enjoy life, ... how do you want to see yourself Then think about what you don't want ... the dark sides, the negative things you won't experience ... ...

The death ended my wife’s life, but not my love for her. I still love my wife - even there is no reply anymore. Process of mourning  When I think about my process of mourning and my learning of mourning - I think it is important to realize the absence of the deceased. But at the same time, however, there is also the strong wish to be able to continue living this love - for sure in a different form. If I / you can manage to find a way to do it - to continue this love, I firmly believe - it can be a great resource for future life without the deceased. The pain as a constant companion of grief is there, but hope also accompanies it! I have the feeling, the worry … that it will be not easy and also hardly noticeable at first and in the near future, but I believe that it will grow more and more. And I already feel it has become easier while I talk about my wife and the steps my wife and I took, and how my wife got to her decision. Talking to friends, grief counselors, in self-help gr...

I am convinced that the individual and general right of personality of everybody encompasses a right to an autonomous living and also a self-determined death. I firmly believe in freedom, respect and dignity and as a last consequence it must include the freedom to take one’s own life and, as the case may be, resort to assistance provided voluntarily by third parties for this purpose. When I talk about third parties - I think of medical, anesthetic, professional, and psychological support by experts - experts like medical practitioner, psychologist, and other experts perhaps also palliative and hospice care. It should be beyond all question that the consideration and the act of a self-determined death and assisted dying isn’t easy for anybody. When an individual decides to end their own life - came to this ultimate decision - basing and founding on individual and personal definitions of their own thinking, perception and believing of their quality of life and a meaningful existence. ...