Judy Macdonald Johnston speaks at TED University, where audience members from TED2013 get the chance to speak.

“What would be a good end of life?” Judy Macdonald Johnston asks in today’s talk, given at TED2013. Her answer — based on her own experience of helping two friends face death in a way that respected the incredible life they’d built — involves five practices, all of which can help maintain a high quality of life even as independence and bodily function decline.

Judy MacDonald Johnston: Prepare for a good end of lifeFirst, make a plan, which means “answering straightforward questions about the end you want.” Second, recruit advocates who have “the time and proximity to do this job well” and can thrive under the unique pressures of this task. Third, prepare important documents — like summaries of your medical history — for the hospital. Fourth, select caregivers who fit your needs and desires, which might take a few tries. And fifth, ponder and discuss last words: “What do you want to hear at the very end and from whom would you like to hear it?”

We talk about how to live the good life all the time. And yet, though we all face death, we’re less willing to talk about what would be a good conclusion to life. Here, some further reading, watching and listening on this hard but important topic.

1. Read: This Wild Darkness. In the mid-‘90s, Harold Brodkey wrote a series of essays, mostly for The New Yorker, about his experiences and emotions as he died of AIDS. In these essays — subsequently published in a single volume as This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death — Brodkey reckons with the realities of both his impending death and, through that lens, his life. His style can be self-aggrandizing, but ultimately, the book acts as a case study of how self-reflection through writing can make nearing death a little bit less terrifying. “The obsession with literary power games, with recognition and reputation, gradually subsides and gives way to something like acceptance,” Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times upon the book’s publication.
   .
2. Watch: A Will for the Woods. The new documentary A Will for the Woods, featured in our roundup 9 documentaries that you need to see in 2013, follows psychiatrist Clark Wang as he battles lymphoma and arranges his own burial. His resolve for a burial that helps, rather than harms, the environment spawns the first natural burial ground in the state of North Carolina. The film’s website notes that green burials were the norm “before the contemporary funeral industry propagated expensive and elaborate funerals as traditional,” and applauds the growing demand for them now.
   .
3. Bookmark: The Hospice Foundation. The Hospice Foundation of America offers several quite lovely pages (and for-sale booklets) about approaching your own, or a loved one’s, death. A page entitled “Signs of Approaching Death” explains what death looks like in a purely practical sense—something we don’t and can’t know the first time we confront it. The unknown tends to frighten us most, so having a bit more advanced warning of what’s to come might serve as a comfort. For example, the site explains that as you near death, fluid can build up in your lungs, casing a rattling as you breathe. “This breathing sound is often distressing to caregivers but it is not an indication of pain or suffering,” the site assures us. (There are also practical sections, as on advance care planning.)
   .
4. Bookmark: New Old Age. The New York Times’ “New Old Age” blog, which Johnston links to on her own website, explores what it’s like to care for adults over age 80.  Recent posts are on Vermont’s passage of the ‘Aid in Dying’ measure, a look at a recent study on dementia units, and what millennials need to ask their parents while they can.
   .
5. Listen: “When Prolonging Death Seems Worse Than Death.” Last year, Fresh Air’s Terry Gross interviewed Judith Schwarz, of the nonprofit Compassion & Choices, about end-of-life decisions for the terminally ill. In the interview, Schwarz argues that terminally ill patients should have the right to choose to die sooner. Beyond dealing with the realities of what terminal illness means, the interview offers a thoughtful, compassionate way of looking at the multiple and varied desires of the dying. That is: it’s a lesson in empathy and a reminder that though some ideas may frighten us, it behooves us to look at them in depth. In the story, Schwarz also prods us to consider what it really is like to live through a painful end-of-life, and suggests that in some cases, death is not the worst option on the table. And that’s okay.
   .
6. Bookmark: Seven Ponds. The website Seven Ponds aims to “promote a healthy attitude towards the process of death by encouraging a meaningful experience that is in harmony with the environment.” Their recommendations: cremation and natural burials (see #2, above!). “We see a world where everyone can experience death in their own personal way and feel it’s all okay,” writes Suzette Sherman, Seven Ponds’ founder. For her blog, go here.
   .
7. Watch: “Older, and Unafraid to Talk about It.” This New York Times interactive video gallery presents the stories of three seniors who have recently started therapy to work through the changes they’re facing as they near the ends of their lives. “I’m surrounded by people who are old, and I had to come to grips with that,” an 87-year-old woman says. And, from an 86-year-old man: “You can’t do the things you used to do. You can’t go where you wanted. People look at you differently. What psychiatry does is help you go through the problems and adjust your thinking.”

At TEDMED 2010, opera singer Charity Tillemann-Dick told the story of a revolutionary, life-changing surgery — a double lung transplant. While a doctor had warned her that she would never sing again, Charity Tillemann-Dick: Singing after a double lung transplantshe revealed what it felt like to get her voice back. “We need to stop letting disease divorce us from our dreams,” she said.

Now, three years after her first transplant (she has since had another), Tillemann-Dick has given a second talk, “Discourses from the undead,” filmed at TEDxMidAtlantic in December. In the talk above, she takes a stark look at death. sharing the vivid dreams that she had while she was in an unconscious state after her surgery — a time when her doctor said that survival was unlikely. Having “spent many a night in death’s guesthouse,” Tillemann-Dick  shares meaningful lessons that she believes to be from the next world, and gives thanks.

“While [death’s] sting is real, good can come from it,” she says. “Death is as much a part of life as love, birth and happiness.”

Far too few people are organ donors, and Tillemann-Dick attributes this not to disregard but to our lack of conversation about death. She says it’s time to talk about death. Will you join her?

Yesterday, two bomb blasts ripped through a snooker hall in the town of Quetta in Pakistan, killing 81 people.  We were very saddened to hear that TEDx speaker Irfan Ali, who spoke briefly at TEDxRawalLake just weeks ago, was among those killed.

The organizers of the event shared their sadness with us, through Facebook.

“Irfan Ali was a famous activist who, in his own words, was born to fight for human rights and peace. He said his religion is respect and love for all the religions,” they write. “At TEDxRawalLake, we gave our audience a chance to give their idea on the stage. People came up and gave their ideas, one by one. I saw Irfan Ali noting something, but he didn’t get up right away. We took a break and he came up to the curator and said, ‘I missed it. I would like three minutes.’ The curator said, ‘Okay.’ He spoke after the break and said something which we see daily but don’t notice — he pointed out the issue of taking things for granted in the name of ‘kun k yeh Pakistan hai.’ He ended his speech very passionately. There was something special in his talk — maybe it was honesty. The way he said everything it was just so nice.”

They continue, “No one had in mind that this man on stage will be no more in the next 20 days, He went quietly but left a silent message in his own words: ‘Mere shehr main meri nasal lootne walon, Pata hai beta kis trah jawan hota hai.’ We will miss you, Irfan Ali. God Bless you”

Read more about Irfan Ali on AlJazeera.com. And after the jump, watch his powerful comments from TEDxRawalLake. He will truly be missed.

Daniel Ogilvie was shocked when his 4-year-old daughter ran out of her bedroom screaming, “I don’t want to be a thing that dies.” But every child goes through this moment of recognizing their mortality. A Rutgers University professor who has studied philosophy for the past 25 years, Ogilvie has become fascinated with our beliefs about death and afterlife. In a thought-provoking talk at TED@New York — one of the 293 talks given as part of the 2013 Talent Search — Ogilvie explains his impetus for teaching a course about “soul beliefs,” whether or not we think something of ourselves carries on after our physical body dies.

What is your drive to separate religion from the beliefs of the afterlife? Why do you feel that is important to do in your research and work?

Truth is, I don’t make the separation between religion and afterlife beliefs. Religions make use of afterlife beliefs. Now, each religion has a different message about what to do, and how you have to behave and who to believe in, in order to make it into this gated community called heaven. But each religion has a view on that — a message and the point that I make is that each religion has different prescriptions.

Now, I’m ambivalent again, but that’s what got me into this issue. I mean, what we’re concerned about now is competition between religions about how to get to heaven, and there have been lots of wars fought over this — well, part of the motivation for wars fought is this, and each of the warring tribes are about to have access to nuclear weapons — we’re going to blow ourselves up. I started reading about this, writing about it and doing research on it, but if I cut this out, I will end up with something about how my goal is to have people talk about their beliefs about the soul, about afterlife, and to question the assumptions that we have without really thinking about them. [These thoughts] have been ingrained in us, but my point is to bring them from a level of absolute certainty to “I’m not sure,” and that’s where I make my break. If we’re operating with “I’m not sure,” that may reduce the kind of tension that exists in the world.

Are you particularly a religious man yourself?

No. I give a whole course on this, and at the end of the course [students] still don’t know if I’m an atheist or something like that, and I’m fine with that. I just want them to think about their own beliefs, talk about it, argue about them — well not necessarily argue about them, but read about the history.

I’ve written this long thing about the history of afterlife beliefs, and I’ve written another thing on how we come to believe anything — it’s called, “Anatomy of Internalized Beliefs.” So I keep on, you know, pushing this thing, but I should probably be either retired or dead.

Actually I was to retire next year, but the university loves this course, so it’s the last year I’m teaching it. I co-teach it with somebody who’s really retiring. But, they’re going to videotape it in the fall with really good, professional videotaping to make it available. Maybe for free courses or maybe they’d sell it to universities, with Rutgers making the profit, as a hybrid course where you’d go through the lectures, have recitation, and I would work up a manual on what to do. The university said instead of retiring, let’s put you on a research professor line, so that’s what we’re working on now. It’s a very engaging topic that people are very interested in talking about, and before now this was sacred territory.

Watch out for more Q&As from the TED@NY event throughout this week. Head to TalentSearch.TED.com to watch and rate these talks, as well as those from the 13 other stops along the TED2013 Talent Search tour.