Quotes About Family

Studies find that as people grow older they interact with fewer people and concentrate more on spending time with family and established friends. They focus on being rather than doing and on the present more than the future. Understanding

In other words, people who had substantive discussions with their doctor about their end-of-life preferences were far more likely to die at peace and in control of their situation and to spare their family anguish. A

Whenever the elderly have had the financial means, they have chosen what social scientists have called "intimacy at a distance." Whereas in early-twentieth-century America 60 percent of those over age sixty-five resided with a child, by the 1960s the proportion had dropped to 25 percent. By 1975 it was below 15 percent. The pattern is a worldwide one.

Medicine was just another a tool you could try, no different from a healing ritual or a family remedy and no more effective.

The only way death is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater: a family, a community, a society. If you don't, mortality is only a horror. But if you do, it is not.

Your chances of avoiding the nursing home are directly related to the number of children you have, and, according to what little research has been done, having at least one daughter seems to be crucial to the amount of help you will receive.

told her that things had taken a turn for the worse, and asked her to come in.

Staying at home is recommended.

People with serious illness have priorities besides simply prolonging their lives. Surveys find that their top concerns include avoiding suffering, strengthening relationships with family and friends, being mentally aware, not being a burden on others, and achieving a sense that their life is complete

Reality is more complex, though. People readily demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice their safety and survival for the sake of something beyond themselves, such as family, country, or justice. And this is regardless of age.

I told him of how, almost thirty years before, my parents had narrowed their choices of where to take up practice to either Athens, Ohio, or Hancock, Michigan, in the upper peninsula.

When other doctors needed an orthopedist for family and friends, they called on him.

He was surrounded and supported by family at all times, and he was revered—not in spite of his age but because of it. He was consulted on all important matters—marriages, land disputes, business decisions—and occupied a place of high honor in the family. When we ate, we served him first. When young people came into his home, they bowed and touched his feet in supplication.

It took her several minutes alone with her father before she could sign.

La gente quiere compartir sus recuerdos, transmitir su sabiduría y sus objetos personales, arreglar las relaciones, establecer sus legados, ponerse en paz con Dios y asegurarse de que las personas que deja atrás van a estar bien. Quieren finalizar su historia en sus propios términos.

That fall, they moved in a greyhound named Target, a lapdog named Ginger, the four cats, and the birds. They threw out all their artificial plants and put live plants in every room. Staff members brought their kids to hang out after school; friends and family put in a garden at the back of the home and a playground for the kids. It was shock therapy.

Studies find that as people grow older they interact with fewer people and concentrate more on spending time with family and established friends

But, she said, "It's the rare child who is able to think, 'Is this place what Mom would want or like or need?' It's more like they're seeing it through their own lens." The child asks, "Is this a place I would be comfortable leaving Mom?

The answer, he believed, is that we all seek a cause beyond ourselves. This was, to him, an intrinsic human need. The cause could be large (family, country, principle) or small (a building project, the care of a pet). The important thing was that, in ascribing value to the cause and seeing it as worth making sacrifices for, we give our lives meaning.

Home is the one place where your own priorities hold sway. At home, you decide how you spend your time, how you share your space, and how you manage your possessions.

She felt her sanity slipping. She wanted to be a good daughter. She wanted her father to be safe, and she wanted him to be happy. But she wanted a manageable life, too.

Mr. Drury seldom questioned his daughter's choices, but this sounded to him like a bad idea.

Modernization did not demote the elderly. It demoted the family. It gave people—the young and the old—a way of life with more liberty and control, including the liberty to be less beholden to other generations. The veneration of elders may be gone, but not because it has been replaced by veneration of youth. It's been replaced by veneration of the Independent self.

His thirty-something son moved in to care for him.