Best 58 quotes in «end of life quotes» category

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.

The window of opportunity to plan and prepare for the end of his life had closed gradually. Any cracks left open to talk candidly were tenuous and fleeting.

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.

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.

This is exactly the sort of thing that makes traveling wonderful for me, the reason I defied everyone. The two of us together like we have always been, not saying anything, not doing anything special, just on vacation. I know nothing lasts, but even when you know that things are just about over, sometimes you can run back and take a little bit more and no one will notice.

Attempting to grapple with improving end-of-life care is a political third rail.

God has reserved to Himself the right to determine the end of life, because He alone knows the goal to which it is His will to lead it. It is for Him alone to justify a life or to cast it away.

But death does not stand at the end of life, it is all through it. It is the fear of losing, the knowledge of losing that makes love tender.

Are all ends of life so sad?

Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.

In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive.  And at the end of life, we need others to survive.  But here's the secret, in between, we need others as well.

We enjoy this illusion of continuity and we call it memory. Which explains, perhaps, why our worst fear isn't the end of life, but the end of memories

Our worst fear isn't the end of life but the end of memories.

The truest end of life is to know the life that never ends.

There is nothing more tragic than to come to the end of life and know we have been on the wrong course.

Under Medicare right now, I get paid to put a pacemaker in you, but I don't get paid to counsel you about end-of-life care.

Alexei Afanasievich could now go only by betraying his wife with his death, which he had taken, like a woman, into his cold bed.

And when the day arrives for the final voyage and the ship of no return is set to sail, you’ll find me aboard, traveling light, almost naked, like the children of the sea.

After all these years, his best friend is malaria. Even on the brink of an Alaska summer, it comes calling: a bone-deep chill one night, a ministry of sweat the next. Calling him back to old battles.

Are you past pity? If you have consciousness now, if I something I can call "you" has something like "consciousness," I doubt you remember the last days. I play them over and over: I lift your wasted body onto the commode, your arms looped around my neck, aiming your bony bottom so that it will not bruise on a rail. Faintly you repeat, "Momma, Momma.

At sunset you see a mix of humanity's regrets and some wishes coming true, thus the exploding and contrasting colours. On Sunset

At the end of your life what you will regret the most is not the mistakes that you made – what you will regret the most are the things that you never tried.

At the end of my life I want to say, “I lived every moment of it.

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!

But her smile was bleak, without light or warmth. And for the first time I thought of what it must be like to know that you were going to die, that the trees would bud, flower, leaf, dry, die, and you would not be there to see any of it.

Być może całe życie jest zaledwie długim przygotowaniem do chwili, w której się z nim rozstajemy.

Yes, hell exists. It is not a fairy tale. One indeed burns there. This hell is not at the end of life. It is here. At the beginning. Hell is what the infant must experience before he gets to us.

As I enlarged my vision to see the bigger picture of my dad’s full life, I was better able to let go of being stuck in memories of its end.

But after my death let it be known that in my old age, at the very end of my life, there was still plenty that made me smile.

Death is not the end of life but the beginning of eternal life.

Death is a vast mystery, but there are two things we can layabout it: It is absolutely certain that we will die, and it is uncertain when or how we will die. The only surety we have, then, is this uncertainty about the hour of our death, which we seize on as the excuse to postpone facing death directly. We are like children who cover their eyes in a game of hide-and-seek and think that no one can see them.

Death is the final destination of every man.

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.

Everyone for whom I would have cried has already died.

Her words felt like a new beginning, a turning of a page, and, ominously, rang like the beginning of a final chapter.

Did my dad fool the medical professionals or were we involved with a system that avoided end-of-life discussions? Those conversations might have given my dad the opportunity to focus on last wishes, meaningful conversations, and clarify his needs.

He moved his line in the sand. This is what it means to have autonomy -- you may not control life's circumstances, but getting to be the author of your life means getting to control what you do with them.

I am not afraid to fail, I am scared to death of dying and having the Lord say to me. 'Angelica, this is what you might have done had you trust me more'.

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)

I am not knocking advances that provide a healthier life and alleviate suffering or unnecessary premature death. I am advocating inclusion of education on end-of-life matters and the promotion of understanding, conversation, and planning.

I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest.

Hi lover," he says to me, completely forgetting what happened before. He knows who I am. He knows that I am the one person who he loves, has always loved. No disease, no person can take that away. (p.205)

I thought that nothing enormously bad or good had happened to me during my life. All the normal things had occurred. I had lived a completely unremarkable life. I wanted only my home, and the love and safety of those around me, nothing else. I knew there was no particular reason why I was put on this earth, but here I was and I was glad to be here, awed by the beauty of it. It was a perfect moment. (p.99)

I used to be scared of death until I found out it's now called 'end of life.' Phew, that was close!

Life is but a breath. The end of life is the last breath of a man.

My life will end someday, but it will end at my convenience.

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.

Life is a simple straight line between birth and death. The problem is you only realize it at the end of the line.

Look, Hell is taking over Richmond, and soon, Virginia, not long after, the U.S., and from there, maybe the world. So, get over it. Larry is not fake. He's a demon, plain and simple, but maybe you can't comprehend it. I know I couldn't at first. That means no more people checking out books, no more Christmas, cute fluffy kittens, no more anything good and right for humankind. Just demons, Hell, and the end of life as we know it.

Of course, it’s now obvious why he was so angry that day. People don’t move into hospice to live but to die. And that half an egg sandwich I ended up making him–that sandwich was the last meal he ate in our Haight-Ashbury apartment, our one true home.