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A High School Class Called “Hospice”
The Harley School in Rochester, New York, runs a hospice volunteer class for its high school seniorsIn 2002, Bob Kane created an award-winning hospice volunteer program for high school students at Rochester, New York’s Norman Howard School. He then moved on to The Harley School in Rochester, where he created a class for high school seniors called “Hospice,” which he taught for ten years. It’s a class with a drastically different…
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Monday Hearts for Madalene
Page Hodel creates the most beautiful hearts in an ongoing celebration of loveSpring Has Sprung! It’s an honor for SevenPonds to share with our readers the story of the Monday Hearts for Madalene project, a true account of the power of love in the midst of death. The project’s origins take us to 2005: the moment Page Hodel encountered Madalene Rodriguez and fell “instantly, dizzyingly in love with her.” The couple’s…
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Vladimir Yakovlev’s “The Age of Happiness” Shows Seniors in a Whole New Light
A Russian journalist’s photo series shows a side of aging we rarely seeIn our youth-obsessed culture, negative stereotypes of aging people are everywhere. Conjure up an image of an elderly person and what do you see? A stooped old man with a walker, perhaps? A frail, gray-haired woman being tended to in a nursing home? Whatever you imagine, it’s almost certainly not an image of a vibrant,…
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Our Weekly Tip: Use A Checklist of Priorities When Someone Dies
Use the SevenPonds checklist to keep track of logistics and paperworkOur Tip of the Week: Even when a death is expected, the moments and days following a loved one’s passing are often experienced in a fog-like, altered state. Keeping track of the necessary paperwork and logistical matters required of you can seem like an overwhelming challenge, which is why SevenPonds has compiled a checklist of things…
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How Can We Open Conversations about Aging with our Elderly Parents? (Interview)
Katharina Dress from Aging in Harmony talks about faciliating discussions between the elderly and their familiesToday, SevenPonds speaks with Katharina Dress from Aging in Harmony, an organization that provides communication support for elders and their families and caretakers. Katharina has a masters degree in communications from San Francisco State University and has completed extensive training in mediation, facilitation and conflict-coaching training. She now serves as a mediator on the Civil…
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“The Tiger’s Wife”
War and death are intertwined with mythical surrealism in this author’s debut novelWhen Téa Obreht wrote “The Tiger’s Wife,” she was a 25-year-old student studying at Cornell University. Born in Yugoslavia, Obreht was heavily influenced by the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. To escape from the conflict, her family left Yugoslavia for Egypt, then later the United States, where she has lived since she was 12 years old. This…
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“Like I’m Gonna Lose You”
Meghan Trainor and John Legend sing about the pain of lossMeghan Trainor is a rarity in the world of pop music. An accomplished singer, songwriter and music publisher by the time she was barely out of her teens, the 22 year-old star records punchy, throwback-style tracks that sound like they were plucked from The Top 100 songs of the 1950s. Yet at the same time,…
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Caravan Over Chemo: One Woman’s Cancer Diagnosis Leads to the Ultimate Road Trip
A 90-year-old woman embraces her love of travel at the end of lifeWhen her doctor told her that she had uterine cancer, 90-year-old Norma responded, “I’m hitting the road.” Rather than choosing surgery or undergoing chemotherapy, she decided to take an extended road trip six months ago, and she hasn’t stopped since. Norma now has a Facebook page dedicated to her decision to forgo cancer treatment in…
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