Grief & Bereavement

We wish everyone would read this book, regardless of age, health, or faith. Ostaseski’s stories from years of hospice work as well as reflections from his own life are poignant and inspirational. He offers ways to live with uncertainty and find joy, peace, and acceptance at any time in our lives.

This book, writes NH Options ally Charles Felton, discusses the problems and various practical aspects navigating Vermont’s Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act. The author is a research anthropologist at the Center for Bioethics at the University of North Carolina. She interviewed patients, caregivers, activists, healthcare providers, and legislators. It’s an important contribution for everyone working on legalizing medical aid in dying – and especially for us next door in New Hampshire. There’s a link to the author discussing her work: Watch here.

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.

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.

Bloom’s powerful, poignant, and deeply humane story of her husband’s living with early onset Alzheimer’s – and his choice to end his life. Bloom, a noted novelist, is also a therapist. With sometimes painful honesty, she describes their journey of sorrow, anger, confusion, frustration, joy, beauty, and deep love. Their story begs the question, why should Americans have to travel to Switzerland to take control of their own deaths?

“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.

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.

NH Options ally Eric Brungot writes: Author Lydia Dugdale is both an internist and medical ethicist. She is associate professor of medicine and director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia University. In this book, she explores the ancient Ars Moriendi, which in its day, was a prescription on how to die well. She further writes that dying well requires us to, in turn, live well. But how does one do that? A very enjoyable and enlightening read.

After her husband’s death, Rehm committed herself to the movement for death with dignity. The former NPR radio host interviewed a range of medical professionals, family members, advocates, ethicists, and others on both sides of right to die issues.