Websites with practical resources
End of Life Collective—So many end-of-life care resources on this site. Courses, books, providers, etc.
Caringinfo: A program of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization
Five Wishes, National Info on Advance Care Planning
Death Cafe: Death Cafés are places people gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death. I wrote about attending a death café in Boise in my second installment of Tending to Endings.
More Memoir
The Still Point of the Turning World, Emily Rapp Black. A friend who knew I was writing a memoir about my mother’s dying gave me this book, written by a mother who is told her first child has Tay-Sachs disease, a rare and always fatal degenerative disorder. It was an honor to read such an intimate perspective on loss by such a talented and honest writer.
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion. I remember hearing Didion give an interview on this book about the death of her husband, where she said (if I remember correctly) she was writing about grief as though it was a place and she was writing a travel story, observing everything, so that when you go there, you might have some landmarks. I read this classic before many of my own big losses and I’m thinking it’s probably time to read it again.
When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi
Kalanithi was a neurosurgeon, English major, scientist, and husband who wrote a memoir about his own illness that was published after his death from metastatic lung cancer.
This TED talk given by the author’s wife reflects on the purpose of sharing that story. The book and the TED talk are incredibly insightful and moving.
More Books about End-of-Life Care
The American Book of Living and Dying: Lessons in Healing Spiritual Pain, Richard F. Groves and Henriette Anne Klauser.
Individual Poems
Short Creative Nonfiction
The Fourth State of Matter, Jo Ann Beard
The Micky Mantle Koan, by David James Duncan (Harpers Magazine subscription to access)
On my To-Read-Next List
Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss, Margaret Renkl
Smoke Gets in Your eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory, Catlin Doughty
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach