Creating Rituals To Honor The Dead At Long-Term-Care Facilities

(By Judith Graham for Kaiser Health News)

GRAY, Ga. — One by one, their names were recited as family members clutched one another’s hands and silently wept.

Seventeen men and women had died within the past year at Gray Health & Rehabilitation, a 58-bed nursing home. Today, their lives were being honored and the losses experienced by those who cared for them recognized.

Death and its companion, grief, have a profound presence in long-term-care facilities. Residents may wake up one morning to find someone they saw every day in the dining room gone. Nursing aides may arrive at work to find an empty bed, occupied the day before by someone they’d helped for months. Continue reading article here…

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

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