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BUY NOW: Dying: A Book of Comfort

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MOVIES ABOUT DEATH AND DYING
If you purchase anything after clicking on an Amazon.com link below, we get a small commission, which helps support the costs of maintaining this site. You can also rent the movies from Netflix, among other options (for example, many libraries have good video collections)

• As It Is in Heaven. "Romantic and funny, this deeply felt ode to love is a roller-coaster ride of emotions," wrote Variety, and I agree. As a bonus, the hero of this lovable Swedish film is played by Michael Nyqvist, co-star of the movies based on the Stieg Larsson "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" trilogy.

• Departures. A Japanese film about a very tender way to say goodbye.

• Ikiru (To Live). In this classic Japanese film by Kurosawa, a civil servant, learning he has cancer, realizes he has nothing to show for his life and sets out to find something that will give it meaning. A beautiful film.

• Wit. HBO released this film, directed by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson, and based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play -- in which the ravages of cancer (and brutal cancer treatment and insensitive medical caregivers) force a demanding English literature professor to reassess life and the nature of intellect and emotion.

• Four Weddings and a Funeral. A romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas.

• The Barbarian Invasions (Les Invasions Barbares). Set in Montreal, a man on his death bed invites friends and family, including a son from whom he is estranged. Much chat, and a moving ending.

• Tuesdays With Morrie, with Jack Lemmon and Hank Azaria, based on Mitch Albom's nonfiction bestseller. See also the movie based on Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven

• Lightning Over Water (Wim Wenders' partly scripted, partly documentary look at Nick Ray's final days, dying of cancer). Writes one viewer "This movie can hardly be described as a happy film, but it is rare to see death addressed so honestly and with such care as it is in this movie."

• Maborosi (Hirokazu Kore-Eda's haunting Japanese film -- slow in parts -- about the grief, doubts, and pain caused by a death, the circumstances of which are uncertain. Read the reviews on Amazon.com before purchasing--it's not yet available on Netflix.)

• Dying at Grace. One of five documentaries by Canada's Allan King. Not yet available through Netflix, which writes that it "follows the final months of five terminally ill cancer patients as they embark on their end-of-life journeys inside the Toronto Grace Health Care Center. As these patients -- three elderly women, a gay pastor and a former hell-raising motorcycle gang member -- face their deaths with mixed serenity and fear, they offer their experiences as a candid meditation on death and dying."

• Harold and Maude. The unlikely romance between a death-obsessed 19-year-old named Harold (Bud Cort) and a life-loving 79-year-old widow named Maude (Ruth Gordon), who meet at a funeral--a strange, quirky, disarming, often funny, ultimately life-affirming film that went from box-office flop to cult classic in the 1970s.

And these as well:
• After Life (which got mixed reviews)
• Harakiri (a classic Japanese film about samurai codes of honor and ritual suicide)
• The Cuckoo (Kukushka)
• The King of Masks (a remarkable Chinese film)
• Jacob's Ladder. Tim Robbins stars in Adrian Lyne-directed film about Vietnam Vet who thinks he's going insane.

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Books and stories on Family-Directed Funerals

A movement to bring grief back home, a Washington Post story by Rachel Cos, suggests sources of more information on family-directed funerals.

Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of Love, Upper Access, 1998, by Lisa Carlson. A complete guide for those making funeral arrangements with or without a funeral director. Covers funeral law state by state. $29.95 from the Funeral Consumers Alliance or $18.87 from Amazon.com. Available at many libraries.

Funerals Without God: A Practical Guide to Non-Religious Funerals by Jane Wynne Wilson, a handbook geared to humanist ceremonies in Great Britain, where they are more common.

Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial by environmental columnist Mark Harris (a well-written and informative survey of the costs, processes, and effects of various burial options (from traditional funeral with embalming to cremation to various eco-friendly green-funeral options, including burial at sea or on one’s own land), with graphic descriptions of embalming, rotting, etc.

Living Into Dying: A Journal of Spiritual, Practical Deathcare for Family and Community, 2002, by Nancy Jewel Poer. $23 from crossings.net or from Amazon.com

Crossings publishes a resource guide containing “educational, inspirational, and practical tools” needed to plan a home funeral. Available for $55 at crossings.net.

Dying: A Book of Comfort

Clicking on a title will take you to an Amazon.com description of the book and reviews. This is not an endorsement of shopping at Amazon.com (we encourage shopping at your local independent bookstore), but Amazon does have an excellent database. And if you purchase a book after clicking on a link here, the site gets a small referral fee, which helps pay for the Authors Guild server that hosts the site.

• Albom, Mitch. Tuesdays with Morrie
• Apple, Dennis L. Life After the Death of My Son: What I'm Learning
• Ascher, Barbara Lazear. Landscape Without Gravity (about her brother's death from AIDS).
• Athill, Margaret. Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir (about her experience with the end of life when, at 91, death is on the horizon)
• Babcock, Elise. When Life Becomes Precious: The Essential Guide for Patients, Loved Ones, and Friends of Those Facing Serious Illnesses
• Bastian, Sue and Mary Metzger. Fresh Widows: A Conversation (the book) and the blog. Great idea! Have mutual friends introduce you to a widow-buddy, a new friend who is going through what you're going through; you help each other re-enter the world as no-longer-part-of-a-couple, knowing without explanation what each of you is going through.
• Beauvoir, Simone de. A Very Easy Death (about the death of her mother)
• Bernstein, Judith R. When The Bough Breaks: Forever After the Death of a Son or Daughter (Paperback)
• Bolen, Jean Shinoda. Close to the Bone: Life-Threatening Illness As a Soul Journey
• Bolton, Iris. My Son...My Son: A Guide to Healing After Death, Loss, or Suicide.
• Bonanno, George A. The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss . Bonanno finds "little evidence to support the existence of stages of mourning or the corollary that if the stages aren't followed completely, there's cause for alarm. What Bonanno does find is a natural resilience that guides us through the sadness of loss, and grief, rather than distracting us, actually causes the mind to focus; it also elicits the compassion and concern that humans are hard-wired to offer in response to another's suffering." (PW review)
• Boss, Pauline. Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief (about the sense of "frozen grief" that can occur when a loved one is perceived as physically absent but mentally present (because of desertion, divorce, or abduction, or because missing in action) or physically present but mentally or psychologically absent (because of dementia, mental illness, or other forms of mental or emotional loss or injury).
• Braestrup, Kate. Here If You Need Me: A True Story
• Brener, Anne. Mourning & Mitzvah: A Guided Journal for Walking the Mourner's Path Through Grief to Healing . Explores "the place where psychology and religious ritual intersect, and the name of that place is Truth." ~ Rabbi Harold Kushner
• Brodkey, Harold. This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death (the story of his confrontation with AIDS)
• Brody, Jane. Jane Brody's Guide to the Great Beyond: A Practical Primer to Help You and Your Loved Ones Prepare Medically, Legally, and Emotionally for the End of Life
• Broyard, Anatole. Intoxicated by My Illness (critical illness, in his case from cancer, as a spiritual journey)
• Byock, Ira. Dying Well
• Caine, Lynn. Being a Widow
• Callanan, Maggie, and Patricia Kelley. Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying
• Colby, William A. Unplugged: Reclaiming Our Right to Die in America (making informed end-of-life medical decisions)
• Davis, Deborah L. Empty Cradle, Broken Heart: Surviving the Death of Your Baby
• de Hennezel, MarieIntimate Death: How the Dying Teach Us How to Live. A bestseller in France, this book by a psychologist suggests the power of effective palliative care. She recommends playing John Rutter's Faure: Requiem and other choral music for someone who is dying.
• DeVita, Elizabeth. The Empty Room: Surviving the loss of a brother or sister at any age (partly a memoir of surviving the loss of her brother Teddy to aplastic anemia)
• Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking
• Edelman, Hope. Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss
• Elison, Jennifer and Chris McGonigle. Liberating Losses: When Death Brings Relief gives permission for the relief felt by many primary caregivers (especially spouses) about death after a long illness, or when one is released from a difficult or abusive relationship.
• Evans, Dale and Roy Rogers. Angel Unaware: A Touching Story of Love and Loss
• Fine, Carla. No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One
• Finkbeiner, Ann. After the Death of a Child: Living with Loss through the Years
• Funderburg, Lise. Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home (a compelling and beautifully written memoir by a grown daughter—a white-looking mixed-race girl raised in an integrated Philadelphia neighborhood—who gets to know her dying father in a string of pilgrimages to his boyhood hometown in rural Georgia)
• Gilbert, Sandra. Wrongful Death: A Medical Tragedy (about the death of her husband after entering the hospital for routine prostate surgery)
• Goodman, Sandy. Love Never Dies: A Mother's Journey from Loss to Love
• Grollman, Earl A. Living When A Loved One Has Died
• Gunther, John J. Death Be Not Proud (a young son's death from brain cancer)
• Hall, Donald The Best Day The Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon, an account of the happy 23-year marriage of two poets, her illness (leukemia and chronic clinical depression), and their peaceful creative life and many friends.
• Hammer, Signe. By Her Own Hand: Memoirs of a Suicide's Daughter
• Harris, Mark. Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial (why eco-friendly burials make sense)
• Hickman, Martha W. Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations For Working Through Grief
• Hill, Susan. Family (about the death of a premature child)
• James, John W. and Russell Friedman. The Grief Recovery Handbook: The Action Program for Moving Beyond Death, Divorce, and Other Losses including Health, Career, and Faith. By the same authors (with Leslie Mathews): When Children Grieve: For Adults to Help Children Deal with Death, Divorce, Pet Loss, Moving, and Other Losses
• Jamison, Kay Redfield. Nothing Was the Same. The story of a midlife romance and marriage (she manic-depressive, he extremely dyslexic, and the difference between grief, madness, and depression. More about the marriage and dying than about widowhood and grief.
• Johnson, Fenton. Geography of the Heart (about the death of a gay partner)
• Kaplan, Robbie Miller. How to Say It When You Don't Know What to Say: The Right Words for Difficult Times--Illness and Death (less expensive ordered from the author)
• Kessler, David. The Needs of the Dying: A Guide for Bringing Hope, Comfort, and Love to Life's Final Chapter (about the need to be treated as a living human being, the need for hope, the need to express emotions, the need to participate in care, the need for honesty, the need for spirituality, and the need to be free of physical pain).
• Kessler, David. Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms: Who and What You See Before You Die
• Kincaid, Jamaica. My Brother (account of her younger brother's death from AIDS)
• Kowalski, Gary. Goodbye, Friend: Healing Wisdom for Anyone Who Has Ever Lost a Pet
• Kuhl, David. What Dying People Want: Practical Wisdom For The End Of Life
• Kushner, Harold S. When Bad Things Happen to Good People
• Latus, Janine. If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister's Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation
• Levin, Mark R. Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish
• Lewis, C.S. A Grief Observed
• Lindquist, Ulla-Carin. Rowing Without Oars: A Memoir of Living and Dying (a brief, grim, and moving memoir of living and dying with ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease--not an easy death).
• Lynn, Joanne and Joan Harrold. Handbook for Mortals: Guidance for People Facing Serious Illness (Center to Improve Care for the Dying). Very practical, covering all the bases.
• Manahan, Nancy, and Becky Bohan. Living Consciously, Dying Gracefully - A Journey with Cancer and Beyond
• McCracken, Anne and Mary Semel. A Broken Heart Still Beats: After Your Child Dies
• McNees, Pat, ed. Dying: A Book of Comfort. Gems of comfort, healing words on loss and grief.
• McWilliams, Peter, Harold H. Bloomfield, and Melba Colgrove. How to Survive the Loss of a Love
• McPherson, Myra. She Came to Live Out Loud: An Inspiring Family Journey Through Illness, Loss, and Grief. A journalist's account of the "the nitty gritty dailiness of living and dying with an awful disease." (Read this to get a sense of the pain and problems such patients and families face.)
• Mitchell, Ellen and eight other mothers. Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child (powerful book in which nine bereaved mothers share their experiences about what life is like after losing a child in their teens or twenties, including Ellen Mitchell, Carol Barkin, Audrey Cohen, Lorenza Colletti, Barbara Eisenberg, Barbara Goldstein, Madeline Perri Kasden, Phyllis Levine, Ariella Long, Rita Volpe )
• Morrison, Blake. When Did You Last See Your Father?: A Son's Memoir of Love and Loss
• Myers, Edward. When Parents Die: A Guide for Adults
• Nuland, Sherwin B. How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter (superb explanations of the actual physical process of dying and good on why and when to stop trying to rescue the terminally ill and to let them die peacefully and in less pain and discomfort)
• Oates, Joyce Carol. A Widow's Story. A memoir of sudden widowhood, after 48 years of marriage. Her remarriage a year later elicited strong reactions. Read Should Joyce Carol Oates have revealed her second marriage? (David L. Ulin, Jacket Copy, L.A.Times 5-15-11) and listen to Michael Krasny's interview with Oates, KQED (and read NPR's forum comments). (See also "The Widow's Story," about the death of her husband, Raymond J. Smith, in New Yorker (12-13-10, subscribers only).
• O'Rourke, Meghan. The Long Goodbye: a memoir,m which Alice Gregory reviews for NPR in 'The Long Goodbye': A Syllabus For Modern Mourning.
• Page, Patricia. Shadows on a Nameless Beach. A brief and beautifully crafted collection of essays, a memoir of the year after her son's death by suicide, her feelings of parental guilt, finding solace in walks through California's coastal landscape.
• Picardie, Ruth. Before I Say Goodbye: Recollections and Observations from One Woman's Final Year
• Rando, Theresa A. How To Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies
• Rappaport, Nancy. In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother's Suicide. Haunted by the 1963 death of her mother, a Boston socialite, from an overdose when Rappaport was only four (the youngest of six children), the author tries to reconstruct what happened. As her brother asked: Didn't their mother know that she would leave all these shattered children wondering if it was their fault?
• Redfern, Suzanne and Susan K. Gilbert. The Grieving Garden: Living with the Death of a Child. Redfern and Gilbert reflect on their own experiences and tell the stories of 22 other parents whose children died at various ages and from various causes, from disease and accidents to suicide and terrorism. Organized in sections that mirror the stages of grief, from immediate reactions, seeking support, effects on family life and relationships, to integrating the loss into one's life and maintaining connections with a loved one.
• Rinpoche, Sogyal. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
• Rogoff, Irit. Terra Infirma (a searing recollection of his mother's life and her death from cancer, his mother "yo-yoing between smothering affection and a fierce anger")
• Romm, Robin. The Mercy Papers: A Memoir of Three Weeks (a young woman's raw unflinching account of losing her mother to cancer--with no sugar coating, as one reviewer puts it)
• Rosenblatt, Roger. Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt, which E.L. Doctorow describes thus: "A painfully beautiful memoir telling how grandparents are made over into parents, how people die out of order, how time goes backwards. Written with such restraint as to be both heartbreaking and instructive."
• Sharples, Madeline. Leaving the Hall Light On. A mother's memoir of living with her son's bipolar disorder and surviving his suicide
• Shields, David. The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead. Absorbing and delightfully informative account of what to expect from our gradually failing bodies, as we move from birth to old age and death. Surprisingly, not depressing--maybe because information feels like power.
• Singh, Kathleen D. The Grace in Dying : How We Are Transformed Spiritually as We Die. PW: "She is at her most perceptive when she seeks to explain why death is so frightening to us."
• Sittser, Jerry L. A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows through Loss (about the transformative grace that can come even in the face of catastrophic loss)
• Smith, Rodney. Lessons from the Dying.Reflections, exercises, and stories of the dying from a monk who became a hospice social worker, with long experience of practical compassion.
• Staudacher, Carol. A Time to Grieve: Meditations for Healing After the Death of a Loved One
• Taylor, Nick. A Necessary End (about death of parents)
• Vincent, Eleanor. Swimming with Maya: A Mother's Story (how the daughter's fall from a horse ended in organ donations--transforming a mother's grief)
• Viorst, Judith. Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow
• Waxman, Robert and Linda. Losing Jonathan (losing a beloved child to drugs)
• Westberg, Granger E. Good Grief: A Constructive Approach to the Problem of Loss
• Wiesel, Elie. Night (powerful account of surviving the nightmare world of the Nazi death camps)
• Williams, Marjorie. The Woman at the Washington Zoo: Writings on Politics, Family, and Fate (the last third is about her losing battle with cancer, saying goodbye to her family)

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After Life. Radiolab stares down the very moment of passing, and speculates about what may lay beyond. What happens at the moment when we slip from life...to the other side? Is it a moment? If it is, when exactly does it happen? And what happens afterward? A show of questions that don't have easy answers so, in a slight departure from Radiolab's regular format, they present eleven meditations on how, when, and even if we die. (Followed by some angry responses from listeners!)

The Beneficial Effects of Life Story and Legacy Activities by Pat McNees (Journal of Geriatric Care Management, Spring 2009). Get PDF file of journal article here (61.9KB)

Pulse: voices from the heart of medicine (personal accounts of illness and healing, fostering the humanistic practice of medicine, encouraging health care advocacy). See Pulse's archive of poems and stories.

Two movies you might want to see (both available on Netflix):
Departures, a film about a very tender way to say goodbye.
After Life, a film about deciding how one wants to remember one's life.

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Picture books to help children understand death and loss
Most libraries will have these or you can order them online. If you order after clicking on a link here, Amazon pays a small fee that helps subsidize the cost of maintaining this website.

Three classics:
• Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs by Tomie dePaola (for ages 6 to 9 and up)
• The Tenth Good Thing About Barney by Judith Viorst (illustrated by Erik Bleqvad) (warning: expresses doubts about God's existence) (for ages 6 to 9 and up)
• The Fall of Freddie the Leaf: A Story of Life for All Ages by Leo Buscaglia

A few more:
• Where's Jess: For Children Who Have a Brother or Sister Die by Marvin Johnson (ages 4 to 10)
• I Miss You: A First Look At Death by Pat Thomas (illustrations by Leslie Harker) (ages 4 to 10)
• I Heard Your Mommy Died and I Heard Your Daddy Died by Mark Scrivani (illus. by Susan Aitken) (ages 6 to 9)
• After Charlotte's Mom Died by Cornelia Spelman (illus. by Judith Friedman) (for pre-school, about a child who works with a therapist)
• My Grandson Lew by Charlotte Zolotow (ages 4 to 8)
• Part of Me Died Too: Stories of Creative Survival Among Bereaved Children and Teenagers (young adult)

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The town with the short life
"Yearbook photos are taken during a cruel time in our lives, when that single thing you're known for is enough to summarize you completely.

"Time passes and we become who we'll be, defined by our jobs, our families, our accomplishments. Who we were is still a part of who we are, at least to those who knew us when.

"As we move on, lose touch, we're sometimes happiest when we get some minor update about the people from our past. Enough to know they landed on the other side. Enough to touch up our mental portrait of them, and then forget about them until the next time."

That's one passage from the artful and moving interactive documentary (part essay, part scrapbook, part yearbook, part home video, part obituary), Welcome to Pine Point. Allow 15 to 20 minutes for this. Click on Welcome to Pine Point. Scroll toward bottom, click on Visit Website. (Or start here at Broadhead and click on Welcome to Pine Point.) Savor.

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MORE BOOKLISTS
• Books and stories on family-directed funerals
• Books for and about caregivers
• Books about cancer, including memoirs of struggling with cancer
• Memoirs of coping with chronic, rare, or invisible diseases, including mental health problems
• Books about chronic or invisible diseases
• Caregivers on caregiving
• Memoirs of illness, crisis, disability,differentness, and survival (a reading list)
• Narrative medicine
• Books on medicine, health care, and caregiving (for patients and caregivers)
• For your medical reference shelf

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