Making Every Moment Count

In his daytime job as leader of a palliative care counselling team at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, Stephen Jenkinson has been at the death bed of well over a thousand people. What he sees over and over, he says, is "a wretched anxiety and an existential terror" even when there is no pain. And he indicts the practice of palliative care itself, based as it is mostly on pain and symptom management, for a disastrous depletion of meaning. Thoroughly, if unconventionally prepared, Jenkinson (Harvard Divinity graduate, social worker, sculptor, author, blues musician and storyteller) has now made it his life's mission to change the way we die - to turn the act of dying from denial and resistance into an essential part of life. Griefwalker follows the stories of three dying people and their end of life encounters with Jenkinson.

Robert Coley-Donohue has ALS, a fatal degenerative neuro-muscular disease that strikes two in 100,000 people. ALS--also known as Lou Gehrig's disease--struck the Coley-Donohue family twice, taking the lives of both Robert and his wife, Barbara. Bearing Witness: Robert Coley-Donohue follows Robert over the last three years of his life. A retired machinist, he is determined to make the most of his time. With his faithful dog Brandy usually at his side, he lives independently for as long as possible, going out for coffee with his best friend, taking care of his garden and walking on the beach. As Robert's physical abilities decline, tasks become harder. He is fitted with a feeding tube. Doing up a simple zipper becomes a challenge and, eventually, an impossibility. Robert's words become fewer, more carefully chosen and more difficult to understand. In his typically understated way, he says, "This slow deterioration is not fun. Not fun at all." With the help of homecare workers, Victoria Hospice and his three devoted children, Robert remains at home. But the ideal of staying and dying at home soon runs up against some harsh realities. Robert's 24-hour care is expensive, and organizing it becomes almost a full-time job for his children. Eventually, Robert decides to move to a hospital, where he spends the last nine months of his life. Robert's experience is arduous, but also filled with hope and healing. If, like Robert, we can face death with grace and the comfort of family and friends, then death will hold less fear.

Jan Maka was a child like any other, until his family's lives were turned upside down when it was discovered he had autism. What is it like to live with a child affected by this neurological disorder? Through the voice of Jan's devoted mother and the comments of specialists, Anna Barczewska's touching short film introduces us to the demanding reality of autism, a condition characterized by a reduced ability to communicate with the outside world. Going beyond one family's story, A Child Unlike Any Other depicts the daily struggle of parents of autistic children and their efforts to obtain therapy. A poignant cry from the heart.