ARTICLES BY STAN GOLDBERG

I stepped aboard the chartered bus and sat in a comfortable reclining cloth seat with a pull-down footrest It looked no different than thousands of other Greyhound buses in the 1960’s

It’s December and I just got off the C train at 53rd and 5th, when I see his arms flailing above the thousands of people ascending the stairs He defiantly stands halfway up forcing everyone to move around him

It was the type of conversation we’ve all heard, and then thought, “I’d never do that” In a small restaurant north of San Francisco, I heard a woman loudly complaining to a friend about the ingratitude of a relative

As a bedside hospice volunteer in San Francisco, I always have the choice of whether or not to accept an assignment Some, I immediately know are right for me, such as sitting with a man my age who was estranged from his family and desperately wanted to reconnect with them

In the 19th century, the hermit Patrul Rinpoche wrote, Be like a cow Eat, defecate, and sleep

As someone who’s living with prostate cancer, I applauded Louis Gossett Jr’s testimony in Congress on the importance of prostate cancer research funding

How do we “know” something How do we know anything

I stepped aboard the chartered bus and sat in a comfortable reclining cloth seat with a pull-down footrest It looked no different than thousands of other Greyhound buses in the 1960’s

Yes, I’ve become stuck in my morning routine of making coffee, reading emails and puttering around the house When everything else in my life is falling apart, it’s good to do the same thing every day

Did you ever have a memory that rode into your consciousness on the back of a passing odor, object, or random word Something you desperately tried to forget

I’ve been a bedside volunteer for more than five years; sitting with dying patients and their families once or twice a week for up to four continuous hours Sometimes I stay with patients overnight

We often harshly judge behaviors we don't understand They can involve someone's ingratitude, anger, or actions we label as foolish

If you could choose the way you will die, what would it be” Many people cavalierly answer “old age” or “in my sleep,” as if either of these answers will offer relief from an event they’ll do almost anything to avoid thinking about

Imagine that you’re preparing for a thirty-day trip to a foreign country and you’re limited to taking only what can be carried in a backpack Your decisions on what to take or leave behind will determine the quality of your experience

What would you say if a terminally-ill child asks the question Should you be honest, probing, or try to convince her this is just a passing illness

It's easy to dismiss rituals as just the historical trappings of ancient religions Something very beautiful, but having little relevance to our contemporary lives

We layer death with a multitude of screens, hoping to hide the elephant in the room Today, instead of welcoming death as the greatest of all life coaches, we dread its appearance as if it is an embarrassing relative at a family gathering

A client who was dying once said to me, “Every day I feel as if I’m on one of those exercise boards that rest on a ball Just when I steady the damn thing, it starts moving and I’m struggling again to balance myself

In Tibetan Buddhism the word “bardo” refers to a transition or a gap between the completion of one situation and the beginning of another That gap can occur between life and death, ignorance and understanding, or in the case of speech-language pathology, between who we were and what we are becoming

The opening line of the pamphlet was straightforward: Join us in a workshop where you will experience your own death Six months prior, I would have thought it an interesting exercise

It began when I dropped a ceramic pie dish for no apparent reason Expensive, but replaceable

Incredible things are heard when nobody thinks you’re listening Recently in downtown San Francisco I was walking behind a twenty-something–year-old couple

It was an invitation that made no sense I was asked to be a special guest of the South Korean Ministry of Tourism and KMI International, a company that markets medical tourism