Near Death Awareness Recommended Resources

In this moving and compassionate classic, hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley share their intimate experiences with patients at the end of life, drawn from more than twenty years’ experience tending the terminally ill. Through their stories we come to appreciate the near-miraculous ways in which the dying communicate their needs, reveal their feelings, and even  choreograph their own final moments; we also discover the gifts—of  wisdom, faith, and love—that the dying leave for the living to share. Filled with practical advice on responding to the requests of the dying and  helping them prepare emotionally and spiritually for death, Final Gifts shows how we can help the dying person live fully to the very end. 

The biggest fear of watching someone die is fear of the unknown;  not knowing what dying will be like or when death will actually occur.  The booklet "Gone From My Sight" explains in a simple, gentle yet direct  manner the process of dying from disease. Dying from disease is not  like it is portrayed in the movies. Yet movies, not life, have become  our role models. Death from disease is not happenstance. It doesn't just  occur; there is a process. People die in stages of months, weeks, days  and hours. "Gone From My Sight" is literature used to reduce fear and  uncertainty; to neutralize the fear associated with dying. It is  designed to help people understand dying, their own or someone else's.

The hours to minutes before imminent death are generally filled with fear and helplessness for anyone at the bedside. Fear because we  have inaccurate role models from movies and TV and helplessness because  there is no "fixing" death. This brings the question, "What do we do?"  "The Eleventh Hour" is a booklet that offers information, ideas and  support on how to care for a person in the hours to minutes before death  and just after. The aim of this booklet is to help those present at the  bedside create a meaningful, comforting memory of their loved one's  journey from life in this world. For the hands-on-caregiver, family, or  professional, "The Eleventh Hour" is a guiding resource.

Talking about death and dying is considered taboo in polite  company, and even in the medical field. Our ideas about dying are  confusing at best: Will our memories flash before our eyes? Regrets  consume our thoughts? Does a bright light appear at the end of a tunnel?  For most people, it will be a slower process, one eased with  preparedness, good humor, and a bit of faith. At the forefront of  changing attitudes around palliative care is hospice nurse Hadley  Vlahos, who shows that end-of-life care can teach us just as much about  how to live as it does about how we die. Written with profound insight, humility, and respect, The In-Between is a heartrending memoir that shows how caring for others can transform  a life while also offering wisdom and comfort for those dealing with  loss and providing inspiration for how to live now.

“There is nothing wrong with you for dying,” hospice physician  B.J. Miller and journalist and caregiver 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 to help readers feel more in control of an experience that  so often seems anything but controllable. Their book offers everything  from step-by-step instructions for how to do your paperwork and navigate  the healthcare system to answers to questions you might be afraid to  ask your doctor, like whether or not sex is still okay when you’re sick.  Get advice for how to break the news to your employer, whether to share  old secrets with your family, how to face friends who might not be as  empathetic as you’d hoped, and how to talk to your children about your  will. (Don’t worry: if anyone gets snippy, it’ll likely be their  spouses, not them.) There are also lessons for survivors, like how to  shut down a loved one’s social media accounts, clean out the house, and  write a great eulogy.

A renowned psychic medium teaches us how to recognize and interpret  the life-changing messages from loved ones and spirit guides on the  Other Side.

Laura Lynne Jackson is a psychic medium and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Light Between Us.  She possesses an incredible gift: the ability to communicate with loved  ones who have passed, convey messages of love and healing, and impart a  greater understanding of our interconnectedness. Though her abilities  are exceptional, they are not unique, and that is the message at the  core of this book. Understanding “the secret language of the universe”  is a gift available to all. As we learn to ask for and recognize signs  from the other side, we will start to find meaning where before there  was only confusion, and see light in the darkness. We may decide to  change paths, push toward love, pursue joy, and engage with life in a  whole new way.

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s  worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with  stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and  the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the  future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student  “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all  organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon  at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human  identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own  mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death?  What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in  life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a  child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of  the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving,  exquisitely observed memoir.

"Morbid and illuminating" (Entertainment Weekly)―a young mortician goes behind the scenes of her curious profession.

Armed with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the  macabre, Caitlin Doughty took a job at a crematory and turned morbid  curiosity into her life’s work. She cared for bodies of every color,  shape, and affliction, and became an intrepid explorer in the world of  the dead. In this best-selling memoir, brimming with gallows humor and  vivid characters, she marvels at the gruesome history of undertaking and  relates her unique coming-of-age story with bold curiosity and mordant  wit. By turns hilarious, dark, and uplifting, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes reveals how the fear of dying warps our society and "will make you reconsider how our culture treats the dead" (San Francisco Chronicle).