All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf, by Katharine Smyth. Crown, 2019Katharine Smyth idolized her father. He was her hero and the person with who she had long talks, both growing up and as an adult. She also idealized her parent’s marriage. But her father, and the marriage, had a rather large dark side. He was an alcoholic ( Read more... )

Let’s Talk About Death Over Dinner: An Invitation and Guide to Life’s Most Important Conversation, by Michael Hebb.
Author Hebb is asking a simple thing of us: to talk about death. Specifically, our own deaths. For the vast majority of us, that’s not actually a simple thing. It’s natural for humans to shy away from talking about- even thinking ( Read more... )

My Father’s Wake: How the Irish Teach Us How to Live, Love, and Die, by Kevin Toolis. Da Capo Press, 2017
Kevin Toolis has experienced a lot of deaths. As a child, he caught TB and was put in an adult ward of men with various lung diseases- cancer, TB, black lung, a veritable buffet of death. He grew up in rural Ireland, where traditional death ( Read more... )

The Dark Flood Rises, by Margaret Drabble. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016
The dark flood of which Margaret Drabble writes is, of course, aging and death. This novel examines a number of ways in which this tide can be met as various seventy-somethings live their waning years. Fran still works, driving all around England (which she wishes to see all ( Read more... )

The Handbook for Companioning the Mourner: Eleven Essential Principles, by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D. Companion Press, 2009
This tiny book contains few words but lots of ideas- well, eleven of them to be exact. It’s an outline of how best to be with a person who is morning, as a companion who lets the person grieve rather than trying to cheer them up ( Read more... )

Final Victory: Taking Charge of the Last Stages of Life; Facing Death on Your Own Terms, by Thomas Preston, M.D. Forum, 2000The author knows a lot about what happens to people at the end of their lives. His advice is to learn and plan as much as you can *before* you are in that accident or get that terminal diagnosis. He is outraged by the amount ( Read more... )