Grief among gorillas, chimpanzees, elephants, and magpies.
posted by Joe Beese on Oct 30, 2009 - 65 comments

Children Full of Life - grade 4 students in Kanazawa, Japan learn deep life lessons from their incredible teacher and from each other. I strongly recommend this as awesome, but one caveat: keep tissues handy. (5 parts, 40 minutes total, English)
posted by madamjujujive on Jul 25, 2009 - 48 comments

Their task may be depressing, but the generosity of their work is inspiring and hopefully thereputic. The photographers who are working with Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep provide their services on a volunteer basis to help families over come the grief of losing an infant. If you're a professional photographer interested in being involved, they're seeking volunteers.
posted by blaneyphoto on Jun 7, 2006 - 24 comments

Good journey, Joop. "Joop was our handsome goodhearted 'boerenfox' (farmer's fox terrier). For three good years, he lived with us in the small town of Paterswolde, The Netherlands. We found Joop in 2002 in an animal shelter in Zuidwolde. Joop was a canine supermodel." The Dog Log shows Joop's life in pictures and his human's in words. Joop passed away August 8, 2005 from cancer and has quite a following on Flickr.com. Being the owner of a 14-year-old dog, the display of support really touched me and the photos are beautiful.
posted by VelvetHellvis on Aug 9, 2005 - 10 comments

"MyLastEMial.com is a unique online service, which allows you to leave messages for those you care about – to be emailed after your death." Oh. My. God.
via - would you believe? - Yahoo's Daily Links
posted by wendell on Nov 17, 2003 - 28 comments

The terrible business of bearing bad tidings: “You never know how someone will react ... Some people will start screaming when they see you coming. They just know something is seriously wrong when a uniformed soldier comes to their door.” The military, law enforcement, and even MADD have written protocols for contacting the next of kin when someone dies. But doctors are pretty vague about how to handle the conversation, which is odd, considering that 70% of American deaths occur in hospitals.
posted by whatnot on Mar 21, 2003 - 5 comments

Three months after Chris Kempa was struck and killed by a truck, the city of Livonia, Mich., has ordered his family and friends to stop memorializing him at the site (from Kempa.Com, run by his older brother Adam).
posted by rcade on Feb 25, 2001 - 22 comments