What do people do when they can’t afford end-of-life care?  By Mark Betancourt.

Jerika Bolen, who turned 14 just before Christmas, has Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 2, an incurable genetic disease that often claims lives before adolescence. By Jim Collar.

Mr. Schanberg won a Pulitzer for covering the fall of the Lon Nol regime to the Khmer Rouge and inspired the film “The Killing Fields,” a recounting of his colleague’s survival during the genocide of millions. By Robert D. McFfadden. (July 9, 2016)

I’ve never been plagued by the big existential questions. You know, like What’s my purpose? or What does it all mean? By Kevin Simler.

A writer remembers his father. By David Means.

The daily work of a hospice nurse, who treats the physical, psychological, and spiritual needs of people at the most vulnerable point of their lives. By Larissa MacFarquhar.

A team of clinicians and researchers is trying to understand the importance of deathbed dreams to help the ill and the bereaved. By Jan Hoffman. (Feb. 2, 2016)

Every four years some political ingénue decides that the solution to “poverty” is “retraining”: for the information economy, except that tech companies only hire Stanford grads, or for health care, except that an abundance of sick people doesn’t translate into good jobs for nurses’ aides, or nowadays for “the trades” as if the world suffered a shortage of plumbers… By Anne Amnesia. (May 10, 2016)

At the end of the 1800s, one St. Louis company marketed their signature pain-relieving product with a series of macabre calendars. By Bess Lovejoy.

Unfortunately, it is not that uncommon for tragedies to unfold in a courtroom, often where tensions are high and the dangerous linger. We’ve seen it throughout history with numerous judges being shot, lawyers being murdered, and people taking the law into their own hands. However, when one inflicts the harm solely on themselves to end their own misery, it leaves those who bear witness not only haunted by the memory of what they’ve seen but forever questioning one’s despair and desperation. The following is a list of 10 people who refused to allow the legal system to play out, thus determining their own fate.

Keep Shelly In Athens (2011)

Zombies have become a mainstream way to suspend our disbelief and engage with the land of make-believe. However, they may be walking among us in real life thanks to a rare mental illness called Cotard’s Syndrome. By Jaleesa Baulkman. (May 25, ’16)

The rise and fall of medical cadaver ceremonies. By Natalie Zarrelli.

The epic manhunt for a murderer in the forests of Fort Bragg, California. By Ashley Powers.

In this story, two young women are pregnant at the same time by the same man. Neither woman is to blame. By Suzanne Roberts. (Fall ’14)

A researcher changes course to help his son. By Tracie White.

Josiah Neufeld writes about a couple preparing for the end. (Jan ’15)

Lorn 

The gift shop offers shirts honoring the electric chair, “Home of Old Sparky,” and the museum's visitors get a “selectively edited” history of corrections. By Robyn Ross.

Death turned his brother into a cipher, and it would take a return home to collect the pieces of a shattered life. By Philip Connors.