Showing titles in Death & Dying

NA SUÉCIA, existe uma antiga tradição chamada döstädning – dö significa "morte", städning, "limpeza". O sentido é bastante literal: limpar, remover, se desfazer ou desapegar de objetos que, mesmo adorados, com a nossa morte vão se transformar em um fardo para amigos e entes queridos. Essa tarefa de eliminar pertences em vida – descrita como revigorante pelos escandinavos e como inusitada por pessoas de outras culturas – pode ser realizada a qualquer momento, em qualquer idade, porém sempre o mais cedo possível, antes que outros tenham que fazer isso por nós.

In elderhood, the health care system has a narrow view of how to provide care. It focuses on extending a patient's life at all costs, with an over-reliance on machines and procedures, instead of caring holistically for the person. Accordingly, many of us will likely spend our final weeks in long-term care facilities or an ICU. Dying at home, peacefully, and surrounded by family is almost impossible in our world—and our fear of death is a major contributor to this impossibility.

Death and the treatment of the dead body loom large in our collective cultural consciousness. The authors explore the materiality and meaning of the dead body and the living's relationship to it. All the biggest questions facing the planetary human community relate in one way or another to the corpse. Surprisingly, Christian communities are largely missing in the discussion of the dead, having abdicated the historic role in care for the dead to the funeral industry.

A belief in the afterlife is common to almost every faith and culture around the world. Even people who don't consider themselves spiritual share a fascination in life after death. In this powerful guide narrated by Candida Gubbins, author and intuitive Diane Ahlquist shares her own knowledge of the subject, as well as the views of such religious and spiritual leaders as Edgar Cayce and the Dalai Lama.

The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown, and thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the place told of his town and its history. Thus was born Melville’s lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead. Melville’s Over My Dead Body is a lively (pun intended) and wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it.

Una guía útil para los que han tenido que enfrentar la muerte, desaparición, suicidio, o secuestro de un ser querido; quienes han tenido que encarar el miedo, y el tremendo miedo al abandono. Para ellos este es un diálogo afectivo que no minimiza lo ocurrido, lo pone en la justa dimensión para que la mente que recuerda y anticipa se conforte, y las emociones que inquietan y nos rebasan actúen a nuestro favor.

If you've lost a spouse, child, family member, or friend, you've discovered that few people understand the deep hurt you feel. Through a Season of Grief is the first 365-day devotional designed to support and uplift you in the first, most difficult year of bereavement. These devotions offer biblical comfort and practical teaching that will enable you to take steps forward each day toward healing. You will better understand the grieving process and will receive needed encouragement along the way. 

Sieht man ein weißes Licht, wenn man stirbt? Kann mein Körper noch sprechen, wenn ich tot bin? Kann ich zusammen mit meinem Hamster bestattet werden? Kinder fragen klar, offen und ehrlich nach dem Tod. Und genauso muss man ihnen auch antworten. Das ist zumindest die Überzeugung von Caitlin Doughty. Die berühmteste Bestatterin der Welt beantwortet ganz ungeschminkt Fragen von Kindern, die Erwachsene nicht zu stellen wagen. In lustigem, aber immer respektvollem Ton gewährt die Bestatterin so nicht nur Kindern einen Blick hinter den schwarzen Vorhang aus Tabus rund um den Tod.

Packed with fun facts and presidential trivia, The President Is Dead! tells you everything you could possibly want to know about how our presidents, from George Washington to George H. W. Bush (who was the most recent president to die), met their ends, the circumstances of their deaths, the pomp of their funerals, and their public afterlives, including stories of attempted grave robbings, reinterments, vandalism, conspiracy theories surrounding their deaths, and much more.

With the sudden deaths of both of her parents, Mallory McDuff began to research sustainable practices around death and dying. For McDuff, an educator and environmentalist, what started as a highly personal endeavor expanded into a yearlong exploration and assessment of green burials, aquamation, green cemeteries, home funerals, and human composting. In Our Last Best Act, McDuff bridges the gap between environmental action and religious faith by demonstrating that when the two are combined, they become a powerful force for the greater good

Explaining the important difference between grief and mourning, this book explores every mourner's need to acknowledge death and embrace the pain of loss. Also explored are the many factors that make each person's grief unique and the many normal thoughts and feelings mourners might have. Questions of spirituality and religion are addressed as well.

This gripping narrative explores today's scientific pursuit of immortality, with exclusive visits inside Silicon Valley labs and interviews with the visionaries who believe we will soon crack into the aging process and cure death. We live in an age when billionaires are betting their fortunes on laboratory advances to prove aging unnecessary and death a disease that can be cured.

The night before her father dies, 18-year-old Jeannie Vanasco promises she will write a book for him. But this isn't the book she imagined. The Glass Eye is Jeannie's struggle to honor her father, her larger-than-life hero but also the man who named her after his daughter from a previous marriage, a daughter who died. After his funeral, Jeannie spends the next decade in escalating mania, in and out of hospitals - increasingly obsessed with the other Jeanne. Obsession turns to investigation as Jeannie hunts for clues into the mysterious circumstances of her death.

Texas businessman Mike Fechner had it all. Money. Investments. Prestige. Until he did the unthinkable. He sold his company and poured his life's earnings into a ministry for the poor. With a strong faith in God at his core, this millionaire turned missionary envisioned a long future serving the urban Dallas poor and the people of poverty-stricken Africa.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A near-fatal health emergency leads to this powerful reflection on death—and what might follow—by the bestselling author of Tribe and The Perfect Storm. For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put...

Honor your loved ones and the earth by choosing practical, spiritual, and eco-friendly after-death care Natural, legal, and innovative after-death care options are transforming the paradigm of the existing funeral industry, helping families and communities recover their instinctive capacity to...

His routine was the same every day for 38 years...until March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic shut hospital surgeries all over the world.. Craig Smith, M.D., Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, went from performing heart surgeries on patients both everyday and celebrated to sitting in his tomb-quiet office looking out at George Washington Bridge. And he started to write. His COVID emails were balm to the staffers and later became celebrated for Dr. Smith’s care and thought in his assessment of the work of the hospital–of any hospital.

Why do we embalm the deceased? Why are funerals so expensive? Is there a reason coffins are shaped the way they are? Where does the tradition of viewing the body come from? Ceremonies for honoring the deceased are crucial parts of our lives, but few people know where our traditional practices come from—and what they reveal about our history, culture, and beliefs about death. In Last Rites, author Todd Harra takes listeners on a fascinating exploration of American funeral customs—exploring where they came from, what they mean, and how they are still evolving. 

In this deeply affecting and uplifting book, Janet Wehr shares the real-life stories of her many years as a hospice nurse. Her first-hand account gives illuminating and comforting insight into the spiritual aspect of what occurs in the transition between life and death, highlighting the importance of the mind-body-spirit connection as it manifests in the dying process. It also gives a candid impression of hospices and hospice nurses and the services they can provide. All of Janet’s 46 personal stories are true, fascinating, heart-felt, and thought-provoking.

A moving reflection on a subject that touches us all, by the best-selling author of Claire of the Sea Light. Edwidge Danticat's The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story is at once a personal account of her mother dying from cancer and a deeply considered reckoning with the ways that other writers have approached death in their own work. A moving tribute and a work of astute criticism, The Art of Death is an audiobook that will profoundly alter all who encounter it.