For readers of Atul Gawande and Paul Kalanithi, a palliative care doctor's breathtaking stories from 30 years spent caring for the dying.
Modern medical technology is allowing us to live longer and fuller lives than ever before. And for the most part, that is good news. But with changes in the way we understand medicine come changes in the way we understand death. Once a familiar, peaceful, and gentle — if sorrowful — transition, death...

Like Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, an extraordinarily moving and engaging look at loss and death. Eve Joseph is an award-winning poet who worked for twenty years as a palliative care counselor in a hospice. When she was a young girl, she lost a much older brother, and her experience as a grown woman helping others face death, dying, and grief opens the path for her to recollect and understand his loss in a way she could not as a child....

Children have always been close to the heart of God. It is when children are sick, even dying, that they can suddenly bring us closer to God ourselves. Children's minister and former children's hospital chaplain Leanne Hadley has been ministering to hurting children for years. In Touching Heaven, she recounts the poignant stories and simple faith of the remarkable children she has been privileged to serve. She shares their encounters with God, Jesus,...

When a close friend or family member dies, it can be sad for kids and difficult for them to express the big feelings they are experiencing. This book will help explain in a gentle way that death is a natural complement to life and that grief and a sense of loss are normal feelings to have following the death of a loved one. Parents, teachers, and gift givers will find: • language that is simple, direct, and easy for young children to understand • a...

What Our Last Words Reveal About Life, Death, and the Afterlife. A person's end-of-life words often take on an eerie significance, giving tantalizing clues about the ultimate fate of the human soul. Until now, however, no author has systematically studied end-of-life communication by using examples from ordinary people. When her father became terminally ill with cancer, author Lisa Smartt began transcribing his conversations and noticed that his personality...

Whether children are experiencing grief and loss for the first time or simply curious, it can be difficult to know how to talk to them about death. Using questions posed in a child's voice and answers that start simply and become more in-depth, this book allows adults to guide the conversation to a natural and reassuring conclusion. Additional questions at the back of the book allow for further discussion. Child psychologist Dr. Jillian Roberts...

Documents the burial process throughout the centuries and in different cultures.

Explores the way that some people leave the world and others come into it, and how those who come into it eventually leave it.