You get ready to die the way you get ready for a trip. Start by realizing you don't know the way. Read a few travel guides. Study the language, look at maps, gather equipment. Let yourself imagine what it will be like. Pack your bags. This book is one of those travel guides-a guide to preparing for your own death and the deaths of people close to you. The fact of death is hard to believe. Sallie Tisdale explores our fears and all the ways death and...

"The first ever practical, compassionate, and comprehensive guide to dying--and living fully until you do. "There is nothing wrong with you for dying," palliative care doctor BJ Miller and Shoshana Berger write in A Beginner's Guide to the End. "Our ultimate purpose here isn't so much to help you die as it is to free up as much life as possible until you do." Theirs is a clear-eyed and big-hearted action plan for approaching the end of life, written...

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...

All of us are entitled to the rewards of a peaceful, pain-free death. This book honors that with true stories about hospice patients and inspiring insights from the author. Becoming Dead Right guides us through the general and "how to" information maze that prepares us for dealing with death. Improving and expanding hospice services will require systemic changes in healthcare institutions, outreach to diverse populations, and funding. With the inclusion...

"A musician facing the untimely end of his career. An end-of-life doula with everything, and nothing, to lose. A Star Is Born meets Me Before You in this powerful novel by the author of A Million Reasons Why. As an end-of-life doula, Nova Huston's job-her calling, her purpose, her life-is to help terminally ill people make peace with their impending death. Unlike her business partner, who swears by her system of checklists, free-spirited Nova doesn't...

The authoritative, informative, and practical follow up to BEING MORTAL, on end-of-life care for patients over the age of 65. Most people say they would like to die quietly at home. But overly aggressive medical advice, coupled with an unrealistic sense of invincibility, results in the majority of elderly patients misguidedly dying in institutions while undergoing painful procedures, instead of having the better and more peaceful death they desired....

A short experimental film by Tracey Moffatt, shot totally in a studio, about the relationship between an Aboriginal daughter and her white mother. The daughter, now the sole carer of her dying mother, dreams of far away places.

Anna didn't want to die. She wanted to live to see her grand-daughters' weddings. But, it was not to be. It is always tragic to lose a loved one, but it is sheer torture to watch one's partner deteriorate day by day, losing faculties one by one, the use of arms, legs and hands, and eventually the ability to speak. It is awful when a brain ceases to function, memory goes and friends are no longer recognised. It is even worse when someone is aware...

Take My Hand is a welcome, practical guide for the emotional journey of caregiving. The caregiver's twisting and emotional journey is often bittersweet, combining feelings of exhaustion, reflection, love, frustration, delight, denial, connection, and loneliness. Just as they have taken on hand-holding for a loved one who needs multi-faceted support, many caregivers understandably feel overwhelmed and find themselves wishing for someone to guide them....

"This country is fairly crowded with doctors, families, and patients-all possessed of good intentions-failing to achieve the simple goal of allowing people to die with dignity and grace." In the 1970s, most Americans died swiftly and brutally: of heart attacks, strokes, cancer, or in accidents. But in the past three decades, medical advances have extended our lives and changed the way we die. In Last Rights, Stephen Kiernan reveals the disconnect...