Recommended Readings

	On Death and Dying Description from front flap: In On Death and Dying, Dr. Kubler-Ross first introduced and explored the now-famous idea of the five stages of dealing with death: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. With sample interviews and conversation, she gives the reader a better understanding of how imminent death affects the patient, and the patients family, bringing hope, solace, and peace of mind to all involved.

	Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying Description from the back cover: When someone we love is dying it’s hard to know how to help, what to do, what to say. Yet if we know how to listen and what to look for, the dying themselves can often supply the answers, letting us know what they need to hear and express to allay their fears and face death with serenity. For more than a decade hospice nurse Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley have tended the terminally ill. Now, in their intimate experiences with patients at the edge of life. Through these stories you’ll come to appreciate the near-miraculous ways in which the dying communicate their needs, reveal their feeling, and choreograph their own final moments; you’ll gain new insight into the leave-taking process; and in the end you’ll discover the gifts—of wisdom, faith, and love—that the dying leave for us to share.

	Understanding Dying, Death, and Bereavement Description from the back cover: Using a social-psychological approach, this edition remains solidly grounded in theory and research, but places greater emphasis on the individual and coping with death and dying. These two well-known authors and researchers integrate stimulating personal accounts throughout the text, and apply concepts to specific examples that deal with cross cultural perspectives and the practical matters of death and dying.

	Time to Say Goodbye: A Guide to Empowerment During Illness & Aging Description from the back cover: Time to Say Goodbye empowers readers to say 'goodbye' to worry, pain, fear, and powerlessness when faced with serious illness or aging. Inspiring and practical ways to save money, reduce stress, and live life to the max right to the end.

	When It's Time to Say Goodbye Product Description: “When It’s Time To Say Good-Bye,” is a beautiful story of life, love, perseverance and the will to survive even when all seems hopeless. It will grace you with the understanding and significance of each and every breath we take. It will hopefully give you the courage to take chances as you will be introduced to the beast we all know as death and you will confidently learn to embrace its threat without fear. You will share in the laughter as well as the tears that cascade our lives each and every day. However, the author’s true desire is that once you read her story, you will walk away with a belief. It doesn’t matter what or who you believe in – just that you believe in something – anything at all – so that when it comes time for you, yourselves to have to face the task of saying good-bye, that your passage may be graced with contentment and peace as you all enjoy the journey of life – and follow that yellow brick road!

	Nothing Left Unsaid: Creating a Healing Legacy with Final Words and Letters Description from back cover: At her own father's death, developmental psychologist and licensed counselor Mary Polce-Lynch realized the deep need for a new kind of legacy--one that transcends the last wills and testaments that disperse only our material possessions. Developed out of her twenty years of experience, Dr. Polce-Lynch's groundbreaking Nothing Left Unsaid provides guidelines for creating new legacies, showing us how to craft a last communication for a spouse, parent, friend, children, or grandchildren. These healing "Final Words" offer survivors a tangible sense of closure--whether in the event of a sudden death, terminal illness, or at the end of a long, well-lived life. Both practical and inspiring, Nothing Left Unsaid also introduces "Legacy Letters," which provide a way for us to express our feelings to loved ones who are approaching the end of their lives. Both Final Words and Legacy Letters ensure that we have done all we can to let our loved ones know our thoughts and feelings, allowing us to honor relationships and convey values, hopes, wishes, and memories, leaving behind a deeply rewarding legacy that truly leaves nothing left unsaid.

	The Legacy Guide: Capturing the Facts, Memories, and Meaning of Your Life Product description: The ultimate guide and companion for anyone who wants to record the story of his or her life or that of a loved one. Have you ever wondered about an ancestor you know only as a compelling face in a faded family photograph? Imagine discovering an entire book on this ancestor's life -one that described the world in which he lived and detailed his dreams, accomplishments, disappointments, and the accumulated wisdom of a lifetime. The Legacy Guide helps readers create such a book. Designed for writers and non-writers alike, it outlines a simple, intuitive, and highly flexible framework for turning your personal history-or that of a loved one-into a treasured family heirloom. It's been said that everyone has a story to tell, but anyone who has sat down to record his or her life story will tell you that there were moments of feeling completely overwhelmed and frustrated. Introducing the innovative program Facts to Memories to Meaning, The Legacy Guide takes you step-by-step through the seven stages of life-such as childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, etc.-to recall moments long forgotten and to discover their significance. And it helps you fashion these pieces together, much as you would a scrapbook, into a creative and compelling whole. Full of engaging and instructive quotations from the famous and the not-so-famous who have committed their stories to paper, The Legacy Guide will inspire you to capture the milestone events that have given shape to your life and allow you to weave them into a book that preserves this legacy for generations to come.

	Death: The Final Stage of Growth Description from back cover: Ours is a death-denying society. But death is inevitable, and we must face the question of how to deal with it. Coming to terms with our own finiteness helps us discover life’s true meaning. Why do we treat death as taboo? What are the sources of our fears? How do we express our grief, and how do we accept the death of a person close to us? How can we prepare for our own death? Drawing on our own and other cultures’ views of death and dying, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross provides some illuminating answers to these and other questions. She offers a spectrum of viewpoints, including those of ministers, rabbis, doctors, nurses, and sociologists, and the personal accounts of those near death and of their survivors. Once we come to terms with death as a part of human development, the author shows, death can provide us with a key to the meaning of human existence.

	Living Legacies: How to Write, Illustrate, and Share Your Life Stories Product description: Creating stories allows individuals and their families to see and honor their connection to older and younger generations. The authors believe that through such writing, individuals not only communicate the meaning and spirit of their lives to their loved ones but also gain perspective on the larger world. This beautifully designed and illustrated guide escorts readers through the process of writing down their stories and illustrating them with photographs, memorabilia, and other images, including digital format. By offering readers questions to draw out events and memories, the book emphasizes a person's full life, in all of its highs and lows, magic moments, and simple pleasures. The book's supportive approach will inspire even first-time writers to forge a collection of stories to share and pass on to the important people in their lives.

	Legacy : A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing Personal History Description from back cover: When Linda Spence asked her mother to write her life story, her mother stared at a blank sheet of paper and asked, “How? Where do I begin?” In this practical guide to capturing memories that have been stored away, Linda Spence provides the keys to unlocking the recollections that make up a life. Legacy: A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing Personal History is animated by the belief that every life has value and knowledge for others. A personal history is a gift to share. It can restore the connection between generations. What did another time feel like, what did you do to pass the time – or survive – and how did you feel about your choices? The small joys, triumphs, and turning points in a life have special meaning when shared with those who know the writer and who themselves are trying to respond appropriately when life graces them with blessings or seems to come up against a brick wall. Through supportive coaching stimulating questions, shared memories, and evocative photographs, the process of producing a personal history becomes intriguing and engaging. With legacy the possibilities expand, and our present and future find nourishment and knowledge in the past.

	Touching Tomorrow: How to Interview Your Loved Ones to Capture a Lifetime of Memories on Video or Audio Product Description: By the time we are adults, it is all too easy to look at our parents and grandparents as though their lives have been miles removed from our own, causing a communication and generation gap seemingly impossible to bridge. But the older we get, the more we understand the importance of connecting with our elders before they're gone. There is no better way to do this than to talk to them like you never have before and create a record of their lives to share with the next generation. Showcasing over 200 questions that are sure to help you know your loved ones better than you ever dreamed, Touching Tomorrow contains everything you need to record your family's most valuable asset: their wisdom, humor, and love. With tips on preparing both yourself and your elders for the technical and emotional process, helpful hints on coaxing shy or reluctant family members to participate, and heartwarming real life stories from people who have already preserved their elders' memories on tape, this is an invaluable guide to creating a precious family heirloom -- one that will truly touch tomorrow.

	To Our Children's Children: Preserving Family Histories for Generations to Come Description from back cover: There’s a quiet movement taking place right now that deserves to become a permanent tradition in this country: the purposeful creation of personal histories that preserve our lives as we grow older, making the details of our time on earth available to our descendants forever. Whether written, spoke into a tape recorder, or recounted to the lens of a video camera, your stories will be eagerly awaited by the most appreciative audience of all – your family. And far into the future, your family will read your words or listen to your voice and be grateful you took this time to put this gift together.

	All About Me Product Description: Is there someone special you'd like to open up to? Do you want to know yourself better? Self-discovery and self-revelation aren't easy. With simple but provocative questions, All About Me is a great tool for self-reflection that spotlights everything your loved ones would be interested to know about you but never thought--or dared--to ask.

	Heritage writing: Short and simple ways to hand down your story Product Description: Heritage Writing encourages, stimulates, and offers organization for the writing of childhood or family memoirs. After convincing the reader of the importance of preserving these memories, Heritage Writing calms writing- related hesitation and fears, cajoling those first words onto the page. By sampling the many techniques for recording Heritage Writing, the reader is able to decide on his or her favorite way(s) to preserve personal memories on the page. Issues such as Point-of-View, incorporating emotions, using only slices of life, and family secrets all are discussed. The last third of the book offers constructive and detailed suggestions for the written result: sharing, booklets, games, writing with children, selling stories, etc. A list of Favorite Related Materials is included.

	Writing for Your Life: Discovering the Story of Your Life's Journey Description from back cover: Writer and therapist Deena Metzger enables us to heal what is fragmented, injured, or suppressed within us, and experience the wonder of self-knowledge and the joy of creation. In this resource for writers and non writers alike, Metzger helps us explore ourselves and our creativity through journals, autobiography, stories, fairy tales, dreams, and myths. She offers stories and suggests numerous exercises to show how writing shapes and informs our lives, and how our “silence” hinders us.

	Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death Description from front flap: In this long-awaited book of inspiring and practical teachings, Buddhist teacher Joan Halifax offers the fruits of her many years of work with dying people. Inspired by traditional Buddhist teachings, her work is a source of wisdom for all those who are charged with a dying person’s care, facing their own death, or wishing to explore and contemplate the transformative power of the dying process. Halifax offers lessons from dying people and caregivers, as well as guided meditations to help readers contemplate death without fear, develop a commitment to helping others, and transform suffering and resistance into courage. She says, “Why wait until we are actually dying to explore what it may mean to die with awareness?” A world-renowned pioneer in care of the dying, Joan Halifax founded the Project on Being with Dying, which helps dying people to face death with courage and trains professional and family caregivers in compassionate and ethical end-of-life care.

	The Art of Dying Product Description: The "problem with death" is deeply rooted in our culture and the social organization of death rituals. Fenwick believes that with serious engagement and through further investigation of these phenomena, he can help change attitudes so that we in the West can face up to death, and embrace it as a significant and sacred part of life. We have become used to believing that we have to shield each other from the idea of death. Fear of death means we view it as something to be fought every step of the way. Aimed at a broad popular readership, The Art of Dying looks at how other cultures have dealt with death and the dying process (The Tibetan "death system", Swedenborg, etc.) and compares this with phenomena reported through recent scientific research. It describes too the experiences of health care workers who are involved with end of life issues who feel that they need a better understanding of the dying process, and more training in how to help their patients die well by overcoming the common barriers to a good death, such as unfinished business and unresolved emotions of guilt or hate. From descriptions of the phenomena encountered by the dying and those around them, to mapping out ways in which we can die a "good death", this book is an excellent basis for helping people come to terms with death.

	The Mourning Handbook: The Most Comprehensive Resource Offering Practical and Compassionate Advice on Coping with All Aspects of Death and Dying Description from back cover: Even with the help of friends and family, grieving the death of a loved one can be a complex, sometimes overwhelming, process. The Mourning Handbook is written as a companion to those mourners in need of practical and emotional assistance during the trying times before and after the death of a loved one. Having counseled thousands of people who have experienced loss, Helen Fitzgerald gives special attention to the complex emotions that can accompany especially traumatic situations, such as when a loved one had been murdered, when there have been multiple deaths, when a body has not been recovered, or when the mourner has been the inadvertent cause of death. Designed to conform to the special needs of the bereaved, The Mourning Handbook is written and organized in an accessible style punctuated by real stories of people who have experience every kind of loss. With many subchapters and cross references, it can be consulted for a specific problem or read at length.

	Mind of Clear Light: Advice on Living Well and Dying Consciously Description from front flap: “Everyone dies, but no one is dead,” goes the Tibetan saying. It is with these words that Advise on Dying takes flight. Using a seventeenth-century poem written by a prominent scholar-practitioner, His Holiness the Dalai Lama draws from a wide range of traditions and beliefs to explore the stages we all go through when we die, which are the very same stages we experience in life when we go to sleep, faint, or reach orgasm (Shakespeare’s “little death”). The stages are described so vividly that we can imagine the process of traveling deeper into the mind, on the ultimate journey of transformation. In this way, His Holiness shows us how to prepare for that time and in doing so, how to enrich our time on earth, die without fear or upset, and influence the stage between this life and the next so that we may gain the best possible incarnation. As always, the ultimate goal is to advance along the path to enlightenment. Advise on Dying is an essential tool for attaining that eternal bliss.