From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death

Author: Caitlin Doughty

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2017-10-03

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 0393249905

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A New York Times and Los Angeles Times Bestseller “Doughty chronicles [death] practices with tenderheartedness, a technician’s fascination, and an unsentimental respect for grief.” —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty embarks on a global expedition to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Zoroastrian sky burials to wish-granting Bolivian skulls, she investigates the world’s funerary customs and expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with dignity. Her account questions the rituals of the American funeral industry—especially chemical embalming—and suggests that the most effective traditions are those that allow mourners to personally attend to the body of the deceased. Exquisitely illustrated by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity is an adventure into the morbid unknown, a fascinating tour through the unique ways people everywhere confront mortality.

Finding the Words
Finding the Words

Author: Alan D. Wolfelt

Publisher: Companion Press

Published: 2013-12-01

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 1617221910

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With this compassionate book by respected grief counselor and educator Dr. Alan Wolfelt, readers will find simplified and suitable methods for talking to children and teenagers about sensitive topics with an emphasis on the subject of death. Honest but child-appropriate language is advocated, and various wording and levels of explanation are suggested for different ages when discussing topics such as death in general, suicide, homicide, accidental death, the death of a child, terminal illness, pet death, funerals, and cremation. An ideal book for parents, caregivers, and counselors looking for an easy resource when talking to youths about death, this book can be used for any setting, religious or otherwise.

Dear Death,
Dear Death,

Author: Diane R. Button

Publisher:

Published: 2021-11-15

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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Dear Death, written by author and end-of-life doula Diane Button, is an insightful and deeply personal, ground-breaking look at how to really live until the moment you die. Both practical and inspirational, Dear Death explores the "Four Pillars of a Meaningful Life" and what ultimately brings us joy in life and peace in death. How can we heal, change, forgive, and grow, even until the very last hours of life? Through the lens of the aging and the dying, this book explores these important questions, inviting you on a journey that begins right here and now, lasting until the moment you take your final breath.

Estimation of the Time Since Death
Estimation of the Time Since Death

Author: Burkhard Madea

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2015-09-08

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1444181777

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Estimation of the Time Since Death remains the foremost authoritative book on scientifically calculating the estimated time of death postmortem. Building on the success of previous editions which covered the early postmortem period, this new edition also covers the later postmortem period including putrefactive changes, entomology, and postmortem r

Finding Freedom
Finding Freedom

Author: Jarvis Jay Masters

Publisher: Shambhala Publications

Published: 2020-07-14

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 1611809118

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There are many forms of liberation—some that exist at the mercy of circumstance and others that can never be taken away. In this stirring and timely collection of stories, essays, poems, and letters, Jarvis Jay Masters explores the meaning of true freedom on his road to inner peace through Buddhist practice. He reveals his life as a young African American man surrounded by violence, his entanglement in the criminal justice system, and—following an encounter with Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche—an unfolding commitment to nonviolence and peacemaking. At turns joyful, heartbreaking, frightening, and soaring with profound insight, Masters’s story offers a vision of hope and the possibility of freedom in even the darkest of times.

Death Is But a Dream
Death Is But a Dream

Author: Christopher Kerr

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2020-02-11

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0525542841

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The first book to validate the meaningful dreams and visions that bring comfort as death nears. Christopher Kerr is a hospice doctor. All of his patients die. Yet he has cared for thousands of patients who, in the face of death, speak of love and grace. Beyond the physical realities of dying are unseen processes that are remarkably life-affirming. These include dreams that are unlike any regular dream. Described as "more real than real," these end-of-life experiences resurrect past relationships, meaningful events and themes of love and forgiveness; they restore life's meaning and mark the transition from distress to comfort and acceptance. Drawing on interviews with over 1,400 patients and more than a decade of quantified data, Dr. Kerr reveals that pre-death dreams and visions are extraordinary occurrences that humanize the dying process. He shares how his patients' stories point to death as not solely about the end of life, but as the final chapter of humanity's transcendence. Kerr's book also illuminates the benefits of these phenomena for the bereaved, who find solace in seeing their loved ones pass with a sense of calm closure. Beautifully written, with astonishing real-life characters and stories, this book is at its heart a celebration of our power to reclaim the dying process as a deeply meaningful one. Death Is But a Dream is an important contribution to our understanding of medicine's and humanity's greatest mystery.

The Death of Punishment
The Death of Punishment

Author: Robert Blecker

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2013-11-19

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1137381337

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For twelve years Robert Blecker, a criminal law professor, wandered freely inside Lorton Central Prison, armed only with cigarettes and a tape recorder. The Death of Punishment tests legal philosophy against the reality and wisdom of street criminals and their guards. Some killers' poignant circumstances should lead us to mercy; others show clearly why they should die. After thousands of hours over twenty-five years inside maximum security prisons and on death rows in seven states, the history and philosophy professor exposes the perversity of justice: Inside prison, ironically, it's nobody's job to punish. Thus the worst criminals often live the best lives. The Death of Punishment challenges the reader to refine deeply held beliefs on life and death as punishment that flare up with every news story of a heinous crime. It argues that society must redesign life and death in prison to make the punishment more nearly fit the crime. It closes with the final irony: If we make prison the punishment it should be, we may well abolish the very death penalty justice now requires.

Facing Death
Facing Death

Author: Jim deMaine

Publisher:

Published: 2020-09-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781734979107

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ad;bnpaio nbqw;oreb n Is it possible to have a good death, free from unnecessary pain and trauma? What if our final days were designed to bring about reconciliation and release? In this wise and large-hearted book, Dr. Jim deMaine offers advice pointing the way toward a grace-filled transition out of life. Facing Death is both a memoir-in-vignettes and a handbook full of practical advice from Dr. deMaine's forty years in busy hospitals and ICUs. Using stories from his own life and practice, the veteran physician walks readers through ethical questions around "heroic" interventions: Do we fully understand what we're asking when we tell doctors to "do everything" to prolong life, even in cases when a patient has no chance of regaining consciousness? If we write advance directives outlining the kinds of care we would, or would not want, how can we ensure that they will be followed? As a pulmonary and critical care specialist, Dr. deMaine developed deep experience navigating such quandaries with patients and their families. In Facing Death he also treads into territory many physicians avoid, such as the role of spirituality; conflicts between doctors and families; cultural traditions that can aid or impede the goal of a peaceful transition, and ways to leave a moral legacy for our descendants.

Finding Peter
Finding Peter

Author: William Peter Blatty

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-03-30

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1621573907

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A New York Times Bestseller! For those who have lost a loved one to that liar and fraud named Death. So reads the dedication of William Peter Blatty's Finding Peter, a deeply moving memoir that tests the bounds of grief, love, and the soul. Blatty, the bestselling author and Oscar Award–winning screenwriter of The Exorcist, lived a charmed life among the elite stars of Hollywood. His son Peter, born over a decade after The Exorcist, grew from an apple-cheeked boy into an "imposing young man with a quick, warm smile." But when Peter died very suddenly from a rare disorder, Blatty's world turned upside down. As he and his wife struggled through their unrelenting grief, a series of strange and supernatural events began occurring—and Blatty became convinced that Peter was sending messages from the afterlife. A true and unabashedly personal story, Finding Peter will shake the most cynical of readers—and it will remind those in grief that our loved ones do truly live on.

Life after Death Row
Life after Death Row

Author: Saundra D. Westervelt

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2012-10-17

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0813553393

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Life after Death Row examines the post-incarceration struggles of individuals who have been wrongly convicted of capital crimes, sentenced to death, and subsequently exonerated. Saundra D. Westervelt and Kimberly J. Cook present eighteen exonerees’ stories, focusing on three central areas: the invisibility of the innocent after release, the complicity of the justice system in that invisibility, and personal trauma management. Contrary to popular belief, exonerees are not automatically compensated by the state or provided adequate assistance in the transition to post-prison life. With no time and little support, many struggle to find homes, financial security, and community. They have limited or obsolete employment skills and difficulty managing such daily tasks as grocery shopping or banking. They struggle to regain independence, self-sufficiency, and identity. Drawing upon research on trauma, recovery, coping, and stigma, the authors weave a nuanced fabric of grief, loss, resilience, hope, and meaning to provide the richest account to date of the struggles faced by people striving to reclaim their lives after years of wrongful incarceration.