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Jake Haendel spent months trapped in his body, silent and unmoving but fully conscious. Most people never emerge from ‘locked-in syndrome’, but as a doctor told him, everything about his case is bizarreJake Haendel was a hard-partying chef from a sleepy region of Massachusetts. When he was 28, his heroin addiction resulted in catastrophic brain damage and very nearly killed him. In a matter...

The government’s military operation against leaders of the Tigray region could have devastating consequences across the Horn of Africa What a difference a year makes. Just over 12 months ago, Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel peace prize. The Ethiopian prime minister had overseen extraordinary change in his brief tenure: though the committee singled out the peace deal he had signed with Eritrea, ending an...

Netherlands-based startup company behind eco-friendly fungi mycelium casketAfter months of testing, the first funeral has taken place in the Netherlands using a fast-composting “living coffin” made of mycelium, the mat of fibres that forms the underground part of fungi.“I didn’t actually go, but I talked to a relative beforehand – it was a moving moment, we discussed the cycle of life,” Bob Hendrikx, the...

Photographer Simon Bray’s project Loved and Lost deals with the loss of loved ones. He asked each participant to find a photograph of themselves with their lost loved one, and they returned to the location to replicate the image. The project aims to provide a platform, allowing others to acknowledge their loss, and to celebrate the person they loveDeath has a stigma and the...

Ida lost two brothers in 10 days, and Ken’s teenage sweetheart died at 44. Now, they’re looking for answersSir Oyaseh Ivowi sits in front of a poster of two of his three boys. Olume, the older brother, hovers over Isi; both wear traditional Nigerian dress. Underneath are the words: “Gone too soon, but not forgotten. Olume Godfrey Ivowi, 7 November 1973 to 10 April...

From anxiety to grief, our charts illustrate five areas of mental strain faced by people across the country Continue reading...

Through months of illness, I held his sturdy, consistent and loving hands, knowing he would muster the strength until he truly could no longerWelcome to the Guardian’s Power of Touch seriesAt some point in the 1970s, the late, great Bill Withers did a live recording of his song Grandma’s Hands. In the recording, he speaks plainly to the audience, folksy and casual, and introduces...

Two-thirds of bereaved UK adults had nothing to help them grieve, says studyCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageNearly 10 million people were unable to attend the funeral of someone they knew during lockdown, according to a new study from the UK’s largest undertaker, which warned that the nation is heading towards a national grief “pandemic”.In its report, Co-op Funeralcare found Covid-19 restrictions...

Coronavirus has taken the lives of thousands in the UK, but few had made their end-of-life wishes known to NHS staff. Will the pandemic change our attitudes to death?When I first saw Peter Hallgarten, he was lying in a hospital bed, an oxygen mask over his face. I took to him immediately. Afterwards, reviewing the series in which he had appeared – the BBC’s...

The funeral industry has had to adapt to new regulations around death care during the pandemic at the same time as dealing with an increase in work. Poppy’s Funerals in south London is one provider that believes that public health concerns should not impact upon its ability to carry out its role with humanity and respect. The Guardian spent the day inside its mortuary...

Patients, their families and their doctors need to be open about the inevitable as the virus sweeps through our population• Coronavirus – latest updates• See all our coronavirus coverageAs the coronavirus spreads through the British population, there is one fact we can all agree on. Whether we like it or not, society’s greatest taboo – death and dying – has been thrust unequivocally centre...

Grief is always public in Samoa, but now that people post selfies with dead bodies to Facebook, I had to draw the lineThere’s no such thing as a closed casket in my culture. In Samoa, the dead are still part of the living until they are buried.Growing up on the island of Savai’i, one of my earliest memories was being thrust into a coffin...

Washington becomes first US state to legalise practice as interest in green burials surges in UKIt is viewed as a fitting end for a banana skin or a handful of spent coffee grounds. But now people are being urged to consider human composting and other environmentally friendly “deathcare” options.Speaking before a talk at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Seattle...

Leah Green tries out a form of meditation which aims to help people who suffer from death anxiety. In the sixth episode of Death Land she visits Alua Arthur, an end-of-life doula who facilitates the meditation. Through visualising the process of death, the treatment aims to demystify mortality Continue reading...

After losing all sense of hope and home, hunting in woodland with other mushroomers got me through my griefI was a bright-eyed 18-year-old, just one month into an international study exchange in Stavanger in Norway when I met Eiolf. I stood next to him at a party and we spent the whole night talking. It helped that he was one of the few Norwegian...