For lovers of Meg Wolitzer, Maria Semple, and Jenny Offill comes this raucous, poignant celebration of life, love, and friendship at its imperfect and radiant best. Edith and Ashley have been best friends for over forty-two years. They've shared the mundane and the momentous together: trick or treating and binge drinking; Gilligan's Island reruns and REM concerts; hickeys and heartbreak; surprise Scottish wakes; marriages, infertility, and children....

Zen teacher Joan Halifax has been helping both the dying and their caregivers to face death with courage and compassion for three decades. Here, Joan offers the fruits of her work, providing comfort, inspiration, and practical skills for all those who are in the process of dying or who are charged with a dying person's care. Her teaching, based on Buddhist principles, emphasizes that we have the ability to open up to and rely on our inner strength,...

"People often do not avail themselves of hospice care available to patients and families dealing with terminal illness, because they don't understand what it entails. Many wait until their last few days to request this extraordinary comfort care instead of using the full six months available to them through Medicare and other insurance options. Demystifying Hospice describes, through stories, good news about end-of-life issues. Written from the perspective...

"Passionate advocate for end-of-life care and TikTok star Nurse Hadley shares moving stories of joy, wisdom, and redemption from her patients' final moments, offering powerful lessons on facing death, recovering from loss, and how to live your life in this deeply personal memoir. Talking about death and dying is considered taboo in popular culture, even in the medical field. Our understanding of death is riddled with misconceptions: memories flashing...

As death approaches, both patient and family must cope with grief, pain, and seemingly unanswerable questions. A hospice nurse for more than a decade, Karen Whitley Bell has seen and learned much about these challenges and concerns. In “Living at the End of Life”, she reminds us that this difficult time also offers an opportunity to explore and rediscover the fuller, richer meaning of life. Bell has created a comprehensive, insightful guide to...

"As artist-in-residence at the Zen Hospice Project Guest House, Wendy MacNaughton experienced firsthand how difficult it is to know what to do when we're sharing final moments with a loved one. In this tenderly illustrated guide to saying goodbye, with a foreword by renowned physician and author BJ Miller, MacNaughton shows how to make sure those moments are meaningful. Using a framework of "the five things" taught to her by a professional caregiver,...

"How can one enter into another's suffering without being overwhelmed, drained, useless? The author deals frankly with her own experiences of burn-out. Again and again, however, she describes the experience of grace and forgiveness where she finds her humanity affirmed and redeemed through the gift of those she serves. Meditates on the mystery of our wounded humanity, trying to wrest meaning and a spirituality of caring out of the reality of suffering."...

"Tracy Calhoun, a longtime nurse, shares her heart-melting memoir of working alongside JJ, the Therapy Dog, the brightest and most intuitive dog Tracy has ever trained. When not mooching dog treats, JJ is dedicated to helping humans cope with tragedy and loss through love and hugs"--Amazon.com.