As Edith, her best friend of forty-two years who is dying of ovarian cancer, spends her last days at a hospice near her, Ashley, stumbling around into heartbreak, helps Edith celebrate her life as they reminisce, hold on, and try to let go.

As a part-time hospice volunteer, Eric Lindner provides "companion care" to dying strangers. They're chatterboxes and recluses, religious and irreligious, battered by cancer, congestive heart failure, Alzheimer's, old age. Some cling to life amazingly. Most pass as they expected. In telling his story, Lindner reveals the thoughts, fears, and lessons of those living the ends of their lives in the care of others, having exhausted their medical options...

"The authoritative, informative, and practical follow up to BEING MORTAL, on end-of-life care for patients over the age of 65. Most people say they would like to die quietly at home. But overly aggressive medical advice, coupled with an unrealistic sense of invincibility, results in the majority of elderly patients misguidedly dying in institutions while undergoing painful procedures, instead of having the better and more peaceful death they desired....

"We have lost the ability to deal with death. Most of our friends and beloved relations will die in a busy hospital in the care of strangers, doctors, and nurses they have known at best for a couple of weeks. They may not even know they are dying, victims of the kindly lie that there is still hope. They are unlikely to see even their family doctor in their final hours, robbed of their dignity and fed through a tube after a long series of excessive...

Journalist Matt, his vibrant wife Nicole and their two young daughters, have their lives upended by Nicole's heartbreaking diagnosis of terminal cancer. As Matt's responsibilities as caretaker and parent become increasingly overwhelming, the couple's best friend Dane Faucheux offers to come and help out. As Dane puts his life on hold to stay with his friends, the impact of this life-altering decision proves greater and more profound than anyone could...

A month after proposing marriage, Diana Denholm's husband was diagnosed with colon cancer and later congestive heart failure. Following a heart transplant several of her husband's body systems began failing forcing Diana to become his primary caregiver for more than a decade. The Caregiving Wife's Handbook is a step-by-step communication guide to help women maintain emotional, physical and financial health in their unique role as caregivers to their...

Most readers know Jane Brody as a staunch advocate of living a healthy life, to the fullest. But even the healthiest of lives end. This guide will help readers proactively make that end as peaceful, and even enjoyable, as it can be. From financial planning, important medical issues, to the oft-overlooked emotional considerations, Jane Brody shows that preparing for the end of life goes far beyond writing a will.