Acknowledging and Planning for Death

"An ICU and Palliative Care specialist featured in the Netflix documentary Extremis offers a framework for a better way to exit life that will change our medical culture at the deepest level. In medical school, no one teaches you how to let a patient die. Jessica Zitter became a doctor because she wanted to be a hero. She elected to specialize in critical care--to become an ICU physician--and imagined herself swooping in to rescue patients from the...

Describes death customs and rituals from around the world, exploring how they compare to the impersonal American system and how mourners respond best when they participate in caring for the deceased. "Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Here to Eternity is an immersive global journey that introduces compelling, powerful rituals almost entirely unknown...

Portrayal of palliative caregiver Stephen Jenkinson. This film shows Tim Wilson's dealing with his denial of his own death where he almost succumbed to an illness, and coping with the near death of someone close to him. Jenkinson explains something that is uncomfortable for most Westerners to hear, that death and grief are woven into the fabric of life and that death is something to be 'befriended.'

Drawing on the expertise of The National Hospice Organization--the umbrella organization for the ever-increasing number of hospice programs nationwide--this definitive guidebook outlines the many different choices for care and help available to the terminally ill, their families, and their caretakers.

"This book serves as a manual of death education that will help patients and their advocates to decide how they wish their lives to end, with practical and legal information to achieve that goal."--

"A step-by-step program for getting your life in order, so you're prepared for the unexpected. The odds of getting hit by a bus are 495,000 to 1. But the odds that you're going to die some day? Exactly. Even the most disorganized among us can take control of our on- and off-line details so our loved ones won't have to scramble later. The experts at Everplans, a leading company in digital life planning, make it possible in this essential and easy-to-follow...

"Of the many critical conversations we will all have throughout our lifetime, few are as important as the ones discussing death--and not just the practical considerations, such as DNRs and wills, but what we fear, what we hope, and how we want to be remembered. Yet few of these conversations are actually happening. Inspired by his experience with his own father and countless stories from others who regret not having these conversations, Michael Hebb...