6/8/2011 Listening Lounge

A GOOD DEATH

Final Exit by Kelly McEvers
Our first story is a first-person essay from Kelly McEvers about her friend Bob. Bob had terminal cancer and eventually took his own life. After Bob's death, Kelly found a book that covers many aspects of planning and carrying out "self-deliverance" in his apartment. She writes because she wants to raise awareness that if the U.S. had better "death with dignity" laws more people could seek out physician-assisted death in a supportive environment instead of dying alone in a shroud of secrecy.

Bury Me Deep from Salt Institute for Documentary Studies
As hospice nurses, Alison Milne and Michael Schooley drive hundreds of miles a day, across two regions of Southern Maine, visiting patients at different stages of the dying process. Both say a person must have a calling to work in hospice. As they transgress the boundaries between the living and the dying, they enter the most intimate of human worlds.

The Art of Dying Well by Hana Baba
Dealing with death can be emotionally draining, but one man says we shouldn’t fear the experience. Instead, it should be embraced as a natural part of life. Dale Borglum is founder the Living/Dying Project. His organization helps people deal with death, gain a sense of spirituality, live fully, and prepare to die, as he puts it, a “conscious death.” Hana Baba from KALW in San Francisco sat down with Borglum and asked him what exactly that means.