Aging and Aging Parents

“A common sense path to define what a ‘good’ death looks like” (USA TODAY), The Art of Dying Well is about living as well as possible for as long as possible and adapting successfully to change. Packed with extraordinarily helpful insights and inspiring true stories, award-winning journalist Katy Butler shows how to thrive in later life (even […]

“We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for our loved ones.” This insight, among many more in this important book, has helped countless people begin to think about the loss of loved ones as well as their own mortality. Through many stories, Gawande stresses the importance of honest conversations.

With humor, fine storytelling, compassion, and insight, Richmond reflects on the aging process, including his own, from his view as a Buddhist teacher.

Joan Halifax, a leading Buddhist teacher and thinker, has spent years working with dying people, their loved ones, and caregivers. This book offers practical advise, profound insight, and wisdom about the transformative power of the dying process.

We wish every physician, every terminal patient, and every future terminal patient would read this book. Zitter is an ICU and palliative care physician, a great story teller, and a much needed voice of reason regarding end of life care. She takes the reader inside the ICU, bedside with patients facing grave decisions, family consultations, and the sometimes complicated dynamics within the medical team and within individual physicians, especially herself.

“Everyone should receive candid information and medicine’s respectful deference to their beliefs and values,” write Lee, who has spent over half a century in health care and patient advocacy. Her book is intended to empower people to make the best decisions for themselves as illness advances and death approaches.

Written by hospice nurses who share indelible stories from their years of being at the bedsides of dying people. It’s wonderfully approachable, written with deep compassion and insight.

Butler’s account of the decline and death of her father is harrowing, instructive, and a call to action. “Before I shepherded my parents through to their deaths, I thought that medical overtreatment was mainly an economic problem,” Butler writes. “After my father's death, I understood the human cost. After my mother's death, I saw that there could be another path.”

“I know that I need to identify and say the things I am afraid of saying,” Hebb writes, and talking honestly about death is one of the most challenging and meaningful things we will do. Hebb’s on-line Death Over Dinner is a one way to navigate such conversations. This book provides a rich supply of stories, prompts, guidance, and encouragement.

Author Barbara Ehrenreich, the prolific and provocative journalist, asserts that we should stop working so hard to dodge aging and death, allow ourselves to enjoy this gift we call life and think for ourselves, prioritizing enjoyment over peer pressure, fads and propaganda when it comes to medical treatments and so-called anti-aging regimens.

We’ve all heard of Kübler-Ross and the five stages of grief. But how many have read her book? People haven’t changed since she wrote this now-classic. The stories, emotions, and challenges, addressed with her insight and humanity is well worth experiencing.