No Final Goodbye

Guest Blog by Kenneth J. Doka, compliments of Julia Rajtar, MAPS, BCC

This article is written by Kenneth Doka, MDiv, PhD, who presented our webinar on Adult Orphans a year ago.  Ken regularly writes for the Hospice Foundation of America newsletter called “Journeys.”  In this article, he offers thoughts and guidance about when a person dies and we did not get to say goodbye. His examples refer to those who may be dying (there is an awareness that death was imminent), yet we did not have a chance to say goodbye. Although he does not address sudden or unexpected deaths in this article, no final goodbye offers some consolation in those circumstances, acknowledging that the grief of a sudden or unexpected death is different.

Read Kenneth J. Doka’s article in this link

Kenneth J. Doka, PhD, MDiv, is Sr. Vice President, Grief Programs, HFA and recipient of the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Death Education and Counseling.