{"id":20664,"date":"2026-09-17T13:33:32","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T19:33:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookbinderlocal455.com\/blog\/?p=20664"},"modified":"2026-09-17T13:33:32","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T19:33:32","slug":"someone-please-help-me-grapple-with-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookbinderlocal455.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/17\/someone-please-help-me-grapple-with-death\/","title":{"rendered":"someone PLEASE help me grapple with death"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">my aunt, who has ALS, has opted for <a href=\"https:\/\/compassionandchoices.org\/VSED\/\">VSED<\/a> (i hadn&#8217;t heard the term before &#8212; but it&#8217;s voluntarily stopping eating and drinking) (which sounds impossible). it&#8217;s just beyond my capacity to understand the path from here, alive, enriching our lives to \u2014 not here. i mean i do understand it. but not. also i wanted to ask her what she loved, what she regretted, advice she would give all of us, but there never seemed\u2026the moment. not with my mom, either, though for different reasons. also i think why people have mid-life crises \u2014 and not the kind where you abandon your family and date a 22-year-old, more like a crisis of faith\/understanding, though I guess that could play out in many ways, including via red sports cars and 22-year-olds \u2014 is because suddenly death and injury and sadness are all around you, the youthful injustices to your body are catching up with you, your face looks different (in a GOOD way, right), your parents or friends\u2019 parents are dying, you have friends who have died, you have seen sadness, you have seen so much beauty, you see or feel the (not-immediately) looming end and it\u2019s so unknown and overwhelming and like HOLY WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>my aunt, who has ALS, has opted for VSED (i hadn&#8217;t heard the term before &#8212; but it&#8217;s voluntarily stopping eating and drinking) (which sounds impossible). it&#8217;s just beyond my capacity to understand the path from here, alive, enriching our lives to \u2014 not here. i mean i do understand it. but not. also i [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1],"class_list":["post-20664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbinderlocal455.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbinderlocal455.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbinderlocal455.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbinderlocal455.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbinderlocal455.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20664"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bookbinderlocal455.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20672,"href":"https:\/\/bookbinderlocal455.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20664\/revisions\/20672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbinderlocal455.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbinderlocal455.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbinderlocal455.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}