Reading & Viewing

There is so much to explore in the death and dying world. So much potential comfort from reading, listening and understanding this topic. This is an ongoing project of compilling lists of these resources. On the links feel free to add your recommendations to the spreadsheets.

See below my current recommendations in each genre:

Directory on books/talks/documentaries/poetry etc

BOOKS

With the End in Mind

Kathryn Mannix

If you read nothing else then read this.... I creid to pretty much every story. Mannix describing different patients from her time working in pallative care. So very real and moving.

A Beginners Guide to Dying

Simon Boas

Started as a newspaper article after he got a terminal diagnosis, very easy to read and rather funny. Full of great advice of how to look at life and also how to help those with a life limiting illness.

Grief is the Thing With Feathers

Max Porter

This was a crazy delight, one of the weirdest things I have ever read. For me I found it best to read a few pages at a time and let them digest. Some of the descriptions for me really did deeply feel like grief.

TALKS

How to have life changing conversations

Kathryn Mannix, The Good Grief Festival

This talk with author and palliative medicine doctor Dr Kathryn Mannix and psychotherapist and author Julia Samuel MBE covers how to feel prepared for conversations about death, dying and grief.

Let's Talk about Dying

Peter Saul Ted Talk

We can't control if we'll die, but we can "occupy death," in the words of Dr. Peter Saul. He calls on us to make clear our preferences for end of life care -- and suggests two questions for starting the conversation. (Filmed at TEDxNewy.)

Death and the Present Moment

Sam Harria

Sam Harris talks about living in the present moment and the reality of death. The paradox that we do not consider our own death, what we choose to pay attention to in our present life.

DOCUMENTARIES

Dead Good

An intimate portrait of those dealing with their dead, supported during the ritual of care after death by a team of women who are ‘giving death back to the people’. Available on Vimeo

Come see me in the Good Light

Trying to contextualize and come to terms with a terminal cancer diagnosis comes with heartbreak and heavy realizations.

A love that never dies

This is a personal journey by the founders of The Good Grief Project, Jane Harris and Jimmy Edmonds, who describe it as a love letter to their son Josh.

POEMS

Sunflowers

Harry Baker

Harry Baker's instructions for his funeral...

'let's do this loads before we die'

Aubade

Philip Larkin

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.

If tomorrow starts without me

David Romano

I promise no tomorrow, but since today will always last