Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them): A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying

About this book

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CRITICS TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR In its loving fierce specificity this book on how to die is also a blessedly saccharine-free guide for how to live. The New York Times We Are All Future Corpses Former NEA fellow and Pushcart Prize-winning writer Sallie Tisdale offers a lyrical thought-provoking yet practical perspective on death and dying in Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them). Informed by her many years working as a nurse with more than a decade in palliative care Tisdale provides a frank direct and compassionate meditation on the inevitable. From the sublime (the faint sound of Mozart as you take your last breath) to the ridiculous (lessons on how to close the sagging jaw of a corpse) Tisdale leads the reader through the peaks and troughs of death with a calm wise and humorous hand. Advice for Future Corpses is more than a how-to manual or a spiritual bible: it is a graceful compilation of honest and intimate anecdotes based on the deaths Tisdale has witnessed in her work and life as well as stories from cultures traditions and literature around the world. Tisdale explores all the heartbreaking beautiful terrifying confusing absurd and even joyful experiences that accompany the work of dying including: A Good Death: What does it mean to die a good death? Can there be more than one kind of good death? What can I do to make my death or the deaths of my loved ones good? Communication: What to say and not to say what to ask and when from the dying loved ones doctors and more. Last Months Weeks Days and Hours: What you might expect physically and emotionally including the limitations freedoms pain and joy of this unique time. Bodies: What happens to a body after death? What options are available to me after my death and how do I chooseand make sure my wishes are followed? Grief: Grief is the story that must be told over and over...Grief is the breath after the last one. Beautifully written and compulsively readable Advice for Future Corpses offers the resources and reassurance that we all need for planning the ends of our lives and is essential reading for future corpses everywhere.