The dying must often feel this way—steaming along just fine, while on ahead someone has torn up the rails. — Annie Dillard

This workshop concerns end of life. Participants will learn about and reflect on medical issues and choices as well as consider how they wish to be remembered.

Several weeks before the workshop, invite a medical professional with experience in end-of-life medicine, palliative care, and hospice care to join you for the first half hour and explain some common end-of-life medical choices. If you choose to give Five Wishes booklets to participants, order them well in advance at the Aging with Dignity website.

Make sure you have details pinned down for the field trip to a funeral home, cemetery, or crematorium and be prepared to answer any questions about the trip.

Send a reminder to participants two or three days ahead of the workshop and include information about the field trip and about preparation from Workshop 6, Handout 1, Looking Ahead to Workshop 7.

Goals

This workshop will:

• Provide information about end-of-life medical choices and offer a process for participants to reflect on personal choices
• Invite reflection and conversation about how participants wish to be remembered and memorialized.

Learning Objectives

Participants will:

• Gain knowledge of end-of-life medical choices and issues
• Begin to create a living will or advance directives and decide how to share their wishes with medical professionals and loved ones
• Share their draft obituaries and epitaphs
• Consider how they wish to be memorialized at the time of death.