Poetry & the End of Life: Frank Ostaseski, pioneering hospice founder and end of life educator

“Poetry and the End of Life” event on December 5, 2013. The end of a life is not solitary: it is our shared fate, a through-passing universally experienced, witnessed, and attended. This multi-faceted evening brought together the words and thoughts of poets, caregivers, physicians, medical educators, and hospice chaplains. The conversation illuminates and shares some of the ways art makes possible a more enlarged awareness and more intimate embrace of what has been called by novelist Henry James “the distinguished thing,” and by Zen “the Great Matter”-a transition and challenge met and faced from many directions throughout the course of every human existence.
1. Poet Sandra Gilbert reading with Shira Kammen accompanying on violin
2. Dr. Steven Pantilat, director of UCSF Palliative Care Leadership Center
3. Dr. Victor Valcour, UCSF Assoc. Professor of Geriatric Medicine & Neurology
4. Dr. Mary De May, Hellman Family Distinguished Professor of Neurology
5. Poets Jane Hirshfield & Sandra Gilbert with Shira Kammen on violin
6. Frank Ostaseski, pioneering hospice founder and end of life educator
7. Tova Green, hospice chaplain volunteer
8. Dr. Guy Micco, co-director of the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program

[@zoerobinson4429]

Beautiful, heartfelt. Thank you.

[@maryerichardson8302]

I never tire of this video or of Frank’s kind, compassionate wisdom. Thank you, Frank.

[@nevej6423]

Thank you Frank for the profound wisdom and poetry in all these words. You have helped me greatly through your stories.

[@patrickmonk3812]

Thankyou dear friend. Thank yoy Martha.. Thank you Derek Kerr. My tub is slowly draining but I ain't circling the drain-yet. Long may your ticker keep on tocking, untill it doesn't.

[@SylviabombsmithUjhy75bd34]

frank is a goddam pimp. we need more frank videos and his goddam awesome stories please. like now.

[@throughmyeyes9940]

Thank you Frank, G-d bless you.

[@zeldames2494]

So profoundly moving

[@nickvoutsas5144]

The essence is Love just , Jesus Christ forgave all that we might live life through the Gifts of the Holy Spirit rather living a life of death.

[@jillhochwald1487]

i want to learn beside you.