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Rick J. Scheidt, Jim Vanden Bosch, Helen Q. Kivnick, Rick J. Scheidt, Comfort With My Own Demise, The Gerontologist, Volume 52, Issue 6, December 2012, Pages 868–870, https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gns138
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Video: What Time Is Left (64min)
Terra Nova Films (www.terranova.org), Distributor
Directed by Dakin Henderson
Produced by Dakin Henderson, in association with Vital Pictures
Released: September 2012
Video: How to Live Forever (95min)
Wexler World, Inc., Distributor
Directed by Mark Wexler
Produced by Wexler World, Inc. in association with TAJ Luxury Hotels
Released: October 2009
As young videographer Dakin Henderson (What Time Is Left) drives to a family meeting to discuss his Grandmother Deedee’s desire for a living will, he sings a lament: “And I’m young and stupid. Oh to be old and wise, to be comfortable with the process of my own demise.” The lyric accurately captures the common theme of these two films—the life-long, continuous attempts that people make to come to terms with the meanings of aging and of death. Both films were motivated by different yet personally relevant death experiences. Henderson’s film was launched by his own “off-time” near-death episode (his heart stopped during a team sporting event) and by the loss of his Grandma Polly to the inexorability of fronto-temporal dementia. Filmmaker Mark Wexler’s How to Live Forever is a response to his own “morose state of mind” about aging following the death of his mother at age 85, which—in his words—“got me thinking about the inevitable.” Wexler ventures outward on a selective international journey to discover if the ways that others approach aging and death may inform his thinking. Henderson, on the other hand, points his camera more intimately inward, toward the ripple effects that Grandma Polly’s dementia and her eventual death send through family members of all ages. Though the films share the same overarching goal, from an educator’s perspective they differ in notable and useful ways.
