Death: Exit Plan

“I learned virtually nothing about mortality when I was in medical school,” Dr. Atul Gawande says. “I was terrible at knowing how to have a successful conversation with people facing terminal illness.” Gawande, author of the bestselling “Being Mortal,” is now trying to get people talking about better ways to live out the final chapter.

When photographer Phil Toledano's mother died in 2006, Phil - an only child - became his father's main caregiver. Phil started taking photos of him too. In the beginning, he says, "I was taking photographs for myself. I was recording something for myself." But when he started sharing the pictures online, the response was overwhelming. 

See Toledano's photos here.

Mary Oliver has said, "The poem is meant to be given away, best of all by the spoken presentation of it; then the work is complete." To complete the second hour of the Death series, here's her reading of "When Death Comes," taken from At Blackwater Pond: Mary Oliver Reads Mary Oliver and used with permission from Beacon Press, 2006.