Living with Grief When Illness is Prolonged, edited by Kenneth Doka, Ph.D. & Joyce Davidson.    Hospice Foundation of America, 1997                            

This book is a collection of  papers about how a prolonged illness is slowly killing a person, and how that is different from a sudden death or one with a short illness. Prolonged illness means that the care giver is on call for a much longer time; this takes a huge toll on the caregiver both mentally and physically. On the one hand, a longer illness gives time for talking, finding out about the dying person’s life and opinions, and for understanding and forgiving. But the longer time needing care can bring on feelings of guilt in the dying person, fearing they are asking too much of their family.

It’s an interesting book, but because it’s written by several people, certain passages are much more user friendly than others. It goes over such things as anticipatory grief, ethical considerations, hospice care, and sections on AIDS, cancers, and Alzheimer’s disease. The final part consists of how long term disease effects children and teens, things the caregiver should do, and the use of rituals both before and after death. I’d give it five stars for useful information, but only 3 ½ stars for being reader friendly- many passages seem to be written for the professional hospice worker, mental health professional, or MD. So that leaves it with a 4 star rating.

 

All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf, by Katharine Smyth. Crown, 2019

Katharine Smyth idolized her father. He was her hero and the person with who she had long talks, both growing up and as an adult. She also idealized her parent’s marriage. But her father, and the marriage, had a rather large dark side. He was an alcoholic who was a tyrant to her mother, one who raved and threw things. To make things worse, after his cancer diagnosis, he continued to drink and smoke.



Smyth went on a quest to discover who, really, her father was, back before he met her mother or was her father. She interviews people from his past. And then she pairs her own story of love and loss with that of Virginia Woolf, the author of Smyth’s favorite book “To the Lighthouse”. THL acted as a map for her own grief.



This book is a meditation on not just Smyth’s own loss, but everyone’s losses, “Loss” with a capital L. It provides a clear look at death. It would help, I think, if one has read “To the Lighthouse” (a book about Woolf’s grief over losing her mother when she was a child) prior to reading this book; I had not, and frequently felt I was missing something.



Most of the book is about the author’s father and his death- in great detail. Little is written about her mother until after the father dies. Smyth and her mother had always walked on eggshells, because her father could be a real nasty drunk. One minute he’d be warm and wonderful, the next he was in a rage. I found the author’s idolization of her father rather disturbing. Why not, instead, worship her mother, who put up with so much? But you can’t apply logic to love. It is what it is. This book is a great example of how books can help us understand ourselves, our families, and our emotions.

Let’s Talk About Death Over Dinner: An Invitation and Guide to Life’s Most Important Conversation, by Michael Hebb.

Author Hebb is asking a simple thing of us: to talk about death. Specifically, our own deaths. For the vast majority of us, that’s not actually a simple thing. It’s natural for humans to shy away from talking about- even thinking about- our own deaths. And yet it’s the one sure thing about our lives. And yet we ignore it, like the proverbial elephant in the room, until it is suddenly too late to make our plans, to tell people what we want for final arrangements, to decide whether to go with hospice or to fight until the end, to tell people we love them or we’re sorry.

Hebb goes around hosting dinner parties where death is the subject. He uses such prompts as “What would you want people to say about you at your funeral?”, “What do you want your legacy to be?” and “Do you have a will and advance directive in place?”

If you don’t think about these things, and deal with them while you are well, you may very well lose control over them. Do you want to be kept alive at all costs, even if it means being hooked up to machines, unable to communicate or move? How do you want your assets to be divided? If you don’t deal with that, the courts will.

This book will help guide you through talking about these things. You will have to really think about how you think about death, and what you want. I am a hospice volunteer, and I highly recommend it. 

I received this book free from the Amazon Vine program in return for an unbiased review. This did not influence my views. 

My Father’s Wake: How the Irish Teach Us How to Live, Love, and Die, by Kevin Toolis. Da Capo Press, 2017

Kevin Toolis has experienced a lot of deaths. As a child, he caught TB and was put in an adult ward of men with various lung diseases- cancer, TB, black lung, a veritable buffet of death. He grew up in rural Ireland, where traditional death customs linger on. His brother died as a very young man- after receiving a bone marrow transplant from the author. As a journalist, he witnessed death in war zones. He has been virtually steeped in death. But it wasn’t until he went home for his father’s death that it all came together for him.

As his father lay dying, the whole extended family, friends, and neighbors started showing up, to stay through his death, wake, and funeral. They spoke with Sonny before he died, they washed and dressed his body after, and they kissed him in his coffin. Endless tea and sandwiches were consumed. Everyone, from old folks to young children, participated. Death, in this village, was an everyday occurrence, not something to be hidden away. Deaths occurred at home, not in a hospital. The body was not whisked away to a mortuary. This, he says, is the way it should be. We all die; why should it be hidden away? Why can’t we once again normalize it, like weddings and birthdays and all those other landmarks of life?

Alternating the course of his father’s death, wake, and funeral with essays on death in other circumstances, it’s not a feel good book. It’s a thoughtful look at a sad subject- there are sections that brought tears to my eyes. But it’s a book on a subject that our society needs to think about these days. Four stars.

The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something- anything- from Amazon, they will give me a few cents. 

I received this book free from the Amazon Vine program in return for an unbiased review. 

Neither of these things influenced my review. 

The Dark Flood Rises, by Margaret Drabble. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016

The dark flood of which Margaret Drabble writes is, of course, aging and death. This novel examines a number of ways in which this tide can be met as various seventy-somethings live their waning years. Fran still works, driving all around England (which she wishes to see all of before she dies) as an inspector of the various institutions where old people live, as well as making plated dinners for her ex, who is dying in comfort. Her friend Josephine lives in an apartment complex for retired academics; she still teaches literature for adults. Teresa is dying, not so much in comfort, of asbestos in her lungs. She relies on opiates and her faith in God to get her through. Meanwhile, down in the Canary Islands, Bennet has a large house and a long time live in companion. He lives stylishly until a fall, caused by an earthquake, rattles his brain. He will live out his life well cared for, but what will become of his partner, Ivor, when Bennet dies? There is no one to take care of him. In this tale, as in life, death does not only come to the aged; Fran’s son loses his lover to fast moving cancer. Fran’s daughter lives in a flood plain and monitors the world’s ecological problems as water, quite literally, rises.

There is not much in the way of plot. This is more of a philosophical novel; have these people lived good and useful lives? What does it mean to age with dignity? The characters are very well drawn; Drabble obviously cares for these people (she is in her late 70s herself, and so may be looking at her own circle) There is a sub-topic of another form a dark flood that is rising: the immigrants flooding in from Africa and the Middle-East, and the xenophobia that they are greeted with by white people.

The book is thoughtful, but not uplifting; neither is it gloomy despite the subject. It’s humorous in places; neither sharp wit nor irony fade with age. One bit that jarred was the ending; after slowly moving through a few months, suddenly years are compressed into a few paragraphs. Although now that I think about it, time does seem to work that way; in our youth time seems unlimited, while now, in old age, it seems to fly with frightening rapidity. Five stars.

The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something- anything- from Amazon, they will give me a few cents. 

This did not influence my review. 

Final Victory: Taking Charge of the Last Stages of Life; Facing Death on Your Own Terms, by Thomas Preston, M.D. Forum, 2000

The author knows a lot about what happens to people at the end of their lives. His advice is to learn and plan as much as you can *before* you are in that accident or get that terminal diagnosis. He is outraged by the amount of torture done to patients in the name of keeping them alive at all cost, and wants to help people avoid having tubes stuck in every orifice and having a machine breathe for them while they lay there helpless.

He goes through the legal matters like having a DNR- Do Not Resuscitate- order in place, and having someone who has legal control over your treatment if you are incapacitated. He also discusses the limits of what medicine can do in the way of extending quality life, and what things are to be avoided. He outlines the options for making death as pain free and stress free as possible- it’s not perfect, obviously, but it can be better than a lot of people get.

Obviously some of the information is out of date; the book is 16 years old. There are new treatments for many cancers and even for heart failure. There are newer treatments that can extend your life in a quality way. But his suggestion that you learn as much as you can about your illness will show these to you. A valuable book for everyone. We’re all going to die sometime. 

The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something- anything- from Amazon, they will give me a few cents. 

This in no way altered my review.