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