3 min read - My sister Lynette spent the last week of her life slowly suffocating, hooked up to two oxygen machines that burned her throat but couldn't save her. When I asked if she recognized me, she could only shake her head. But there was one phrase she managed to repeat, over and over: "I want to die."

The doctors said her heart would give out within days. It took six…

When the call came, the world stopped breathing. A mother knows when life is about to change, not because of words spoken, but because of a silence that enters the bones. For Schenell Roussouw, that silence arrived at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday morning, cutting through the rhythm of an ordinary workday and reshaping the universe forever.

3 min read -The paradox is exquisite. We spend our lives mortifying the flesh, denying the self, flagellating body and spirit, all in the hope of evading an eternity of torment. Suffer now, or suffer forever! It’s the ultimate buy-one-get-one-free offer from the celestial department of moral economics…

5min read - Ah, the grand betrayal, not by a lover, nor a friend, nor even the capricious gods, but by the very body you’ve carried about for decades, that familiar old companion now suddenly moonlighting as your assassin. One might almost admire its efficiency if one weren’t so personally inconvenienced by the whole affair…

The National Association of Palliative Care Centres for South Africa (APCC) recently released a position statement of end-of-life decisions that is available on their homepage.

There is a moment in every life, especially as the shadow lengthens and the light begins to soften, when one confronts a terrible question: Will I still matter when I am no longer useful?