Additional Resources

Podcasts

Griefcast

Griefcast is a British podcast about grief and loss. Hosted by comic and actor Cariad Lloyd, the podcasts feature hour-long conversations about grief and bereavement with people who have experienced the death of loved ones.

Grief Works

Hosted by Julia Samuel – a grief psychotherapist with over twenty five years’ experience of working with the bereaved – we hear stories from those who have experienced great love and loss – and survived.

Death in the Afternoon

Welcome to your mortality, humans! This deathcast will dispel myths about death and dead bodies, dive into history and dark tales you’ve never heard before, and hopefully make you less afraid to talk about the inevitable.

Good Mourning

Good Mourning shines a light on what loss is really like with honesty, hope and humour. Hosts Sally Douglas and Imogen Carn are two mates who are authentic, truthful, a little bit sweary, and on a mission to help others feel less alone.

Music & Audiobook Collection

Videos

Youtube

In My Own Time follows the emotional stories of people across Canada who chose to end their suffering through medical assistance in dying (MAID). Navigating this decision leads to life-affirming realizations with family and friends. Internationally recognized medical and legal experts explain why access to MAID is worth protecting.

In My Own Time – FULL FILM

How do you talk about death with a dying loved one? Dr. Atul Gawande explores death, dying and why even doctors struggle to discuss being mortal with patients, in this Emmy-nominated documentary. “Aging and dying — you can’t fix those,” says Dr. Gawande. This film examines the relationships between doctors and patients nearing the end of life, and how the medical profession can better help people navigate mortality. The ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life — to the very end.

Being Mortal (2017)

Meet the professionals, patients and their loved ones who live and work at the ellenor hospice in Gravesend, Kent.

The Hospice | Full Episodes

This documentary introduces us to Stephen Jenkinson, once the leader of a palliative care counselling team at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital. Through his daytime job, he has been at the deathbed of well over 1,000 people. What he sees over and over, he says, is “a wretched anxiety and an existential terror” even when there is no pain. Indicting the practice of palliative care itself, he has made it his life’s mission to change the way we die – to turn the act of dying from denial and resistance into an essential part of life.

Embracing Life Through Death: The Transformational Power of Grief | Griefwalker | Real Stories

Movies & Documentaries

Defining Hope is a story about people weighing what matters most at the most fragile junctures in life, and the nurses who guide them. It’s a documentary that follows patients with life-threatening illness as they make choices about how they want to live, how much medical technology they can accept, what they hope for and how that hope evolves when life is threatened. It is optimistic and reminds us that we have choices in how we die.

Actor Forest Whitaker narrates the story of a group of inmate volunteers who staff their own hospice inside a maximum security prison in Louisiana where the average sentence is more than 90 years.

End Game weaves together three stories of visionary medical providers who practice on the cutting edge of life and death, helping to change the way we think about both: the palliative care team at UCSF Medical Center, the most sophisticated acute care hospital in Northern California; Zen Hospice Project, a Buddhist-inspired end-of-life residence in a classic San Francisco Victorian; and B.J. Miller, M.D., a physician who understands suffering first-hand (he lost three limbs in an accident when he was 19) and who has worked with both UCSF and Zen Hospice. For most people, the very words “hospice” and “palliative care” are nonstarters—code words for giving up. This core group of caregivers in San Francisco sees it differently. They are dedicated to relieving suffering, and to changing the way we think about—and make choices about—how we live our lives as we near life’s end. Their commitment is vividly embodied in their interactions with their terminally ill patients. These intimate and often highly charged emotional moments—with caregivers, patients, and patients’ families and loved ones—are at the heart of End Game.

The Nurse with the Purple Hair is a warm and inspiring documentary about end-of-life care directed by world-renowned filmmaker Sean Cunningham. The film honors hospice workers and the mind-body-spirit services they provide.

The Nurse with the Purple Hair can be a catalyst to start a quiet revolution in hospice care through increased awareness and education.

Our message is simple: Be brave enough to have an end-of-life conversation that matters.

When Jack Tuller—a man with a terminal brain tumor for the past 25 years—takes control of his destiny by choosing the time and means of his death, his family and friends struggle to accept his decision. Jack’s best friend documents his three-year quest to die with dignity, culminating in a permanent going-away party.
 
Jack Tuller’s career as a budding San Francisco musician and performer was sidetracked in 1994 when he was diagnosed with a terminal condition and given six months to live. Jack Has a Plan tells the story of the following 25 years as Jack dodges one bullet after the next, eluding death at every turn. But at age 55, he begins having new issues with cognitive functioning and discovers his tumor has re-emerged and is growing at an alarming rate. Literally hearing angelic voices and trumpets in his head, Jack can no longer work and loses the wherewithal to manage his professional and social lives. He then meets with his neighbor, a palliative care specialist, and begins the process of qualifying for California’s End of Life Option Act.
 
His close friend, filmmaker Bradley Berman, is enlisted to document his life story before his memory and capacity for language retreat forever. Jack turns his predicament into an art-performance project complete with experimental movies, diaries, and funky dance moves. As he nears his death, he also engages in an odyssey of self-discovery and reflection, attempting to reconnect with his estranged parents—with varying results.
 
A sudden deterioration in his condition sets the final stage of Jack’s project into motion as he engineers his graceful exit from life’s stage. What emerges is a compelling case for patient and bodily autonomy, despite objections from family, friends, medical professionals, and society. A compelling, engrossing movie that explores the nature of love and friendship, as well as the relationship of the personal and political, Jack Has a Plan is an inspiring story about self-determination, creativity, and transcendence.
 
At once a heartfelt biographical documentary essay and a snapshot of the “right-to-die” movement, the film reveals universal truths about mortality, as well as the many emerging options for how to approach the inevitable.

TRHN Nonfiction Collection

Helping Parents Grieve is for any parent who has experienced the death of a child—and for those who aim to help someone who is grieving. You will meet men and women who have suffered: listen as they share their stories, and kindle your own hope for finding life again.  Topics include:

  • Knowing you are not alone,
  • Dealing with the loss of hopes and dreams,
  • Grieving the death of a baby,
  • The family’s grief journey,
  • Honoring and remembering your child.

What should you say to kids when someone they love dies? Should young children attend funerals? How might a grieving child act? Why is the grief teenagers experience especially complicated? How can caring adults best help children and adolescents with their grief?

Written by and featuring Dr. Wolfelt, this video explores several key principles of helping children cope with grief. In use by hundreds of hospices and funeral homes throughout North America.

Introduces you to real-life family caregivers of those with memory loss and dementia, and gives specific ideas and strategies on how you can help your loved one.

Some causes of emotional distress frankly have no simple remedy—or can’t be changed at all. But all of us have short-term crises of one kind or another. What we do about them and how we do it can have a profound effect on our ability to get through them. This program teaches clients seven ways to distract themselves from painful events and emotions and offers invaluable tips for comforting themselves in times of stress.

As hard as it is to believe, we know, in the depths of our being, death will come – either through a diagnosis, or from a sudden accident. Don’t wait until you’re in crisis to decide how you want to be cared for. Difficult as it is, making decisions now about what we want when facing the inevitable, is a great kindness to yourself, and to your loved ones.

In the Realm of Death & Dreaming shares remarkable stories from professionals who have spent a lifetime caring for people who are dying. Insights from scientific exploration into consciousness, deathbed dreams, near-death experiences, psilocybin research and caring for people at the bedside show us that death is not a simple off-switch, but comes with a whole set of phenomena that makes it a remarkable time.

Discusses how end-of-life care has been dramatically transformed through Interviews with Dame Cicely Saunders, Florence Wald, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and Balfour Mount, pioneers of the modern hospice movement

The agony we feel after the loss of a baby is complex and intense as it mixes with misplaced guilt, hurt, helplessness, and deep sorrow. A baby is not supposed to die. Footprints on Our Hearts offers ways to cope with these feelings in the days and weeks of grieving that follow, as it speaks words of understanding, encouragement, and hope for the future for anyone experiencing the grief from the loss of a baby—a stillborn, miscarriage or newborn death experience.

“Death comes to all of us, but there is a difference between the world’s view and the Christian perspective. The world looks away and tries to hide, but we as faithful people have the power and ability to look death straight in the eye and understand it.”

Drawn from his own recent experience with cancer, Wangerin explores:

  • Discovering serious illness
  • Grieving before death
  • Caring for the one who is not sick
  • How do we handle the pain?
  • Confronting the dying itself

Written by and featuring Dr. Wolfelt, this 40-minute video on teen grief contains in-depth information and compassionate advise. Throughout, Dr. Wolfelt’s teachings are interspersed with comments from actual bereaved teens.

TRHN Fiction & Fun Collection

The Recollections Therapeutic Resource DVDs Tri-Pack are collections of beautiful images accompanied by the gentle music of Room 217. This dual sensory stimulation paced at a slower tempo provides an opportunity for pleasure, connection, reminiscence, storytelling and therapeutic support along life’s journey.

 

Six episodes of the very popular 1960’s sitcom starring Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore are featured. “Hustling the Hustler,” “Bankbook 6565696,” “The Night the Roof Fell In,” “Never Came a Duck,” “Show me Your Walls,” and “Man’s Teeth Are Not His Own”.

From their silent movies to their feature films, the uproarious antics and bumbling behaviors of the beloved team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy live on, continuing to delight audiences with their treasured films, forever remaining the first, the original, Kings of Comedy.

Contains 6 episodes

This Andy Griffith Show follows the lives of Sheriff Andy Taylor (Griffith); his aunt, Bee (Frances Bavier); his son, Opie (Ronny Howard); his deputy, Barney Fife (Don Knotts); and other Mayberry residents.

Set 1:

Includes episodes “Opie and the Spoiled Kid,” “Rafe Hollister Sings,” “Mountain Wedding,” and “The Big House.”

Set 2:

Includes episodes “Andy’s English Valet”, “A Wife for Andy”, and “Mountain Wedding”

Set 3:

Includes episodes “Barney’s First Car”, “The Darlings are Coming”, “Dogs, Dogs, Dogs”, and “The Great Filling Station Robbery”

Beloved comedian Betty White returns for her own show where she plays an actress drawn out of retirement. Things get complicated when it turns out Betty’s former husband will be her new director. Can she survive her nutty cast members and ditzy best friend?

Includes episodes 4, 6, and 8

The Lucy Show debuted October 1, 1962. After her divorce from Desi Arnaz, she tackles this series on her own and was immediately embraced by the public. Several formats played during its six year run and included famous guest stars in addition to regulars, Gale Gordon and Vivian Vance.

Includes episodes “Lucy Gets a Roommate”, “Lucy and Carol in Palm Springs”, and “Lucy and John Wayne”

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet came to TV after a successful; run on radio and was the real-life Nelson family on the air. Their two sons, David and Ricky, grew up before the TV audience’s eyes and acted out family situations laced with good-natured humor. 

Includes episodes “The Kappa Sigma Party”, “The Banjo Players”, and “Ozzie and the Space Age”

Contains:

Bonanza – Episode: Badge Without Honor

The Lone Ranger – Episode: Pete & Pedro

Annie Oakley – Episode: Sharpshooting Annie

Randolph Scott – Episode: The Fighting Westerner