The narratives feel generic; the people often feel generic, as though all their idiosyncrasies have been sanded down or air-brushed out.

I thought as well as using CBT at times, that she was also using a solution focused therapeutic approach most of the time. I really would hope that this book would be widely read and not simply by those directly interested from a medical perspective - as the author tells us we will all die one day. In addition to being an engaging and, dare I say, heartwarming read, it is also richly filled with lessons and advice for current or future use. They have all been of interest and informed me to some degree whether they illustrate personal stories or look at the bigger picture. About a quarter of deaths are sudden and unexpected, but she usually sees the ones that come slowly, over months or years, and while much of her work is diagnostic and medical, one of her crucial tasks is to help those who are dying and their families find ways of dealing with life’s final, great event.This infuriated me because of the damage, pain and suffering the language of 'natural birth' and the doctrine of little medical intervention has caused to women and their babies. The book shares the stories of a palliative care doctor and the people she gets to know who are facing death. I have also shared it with friends who have family needing end-of-life care - knowing the trajectory of the journey stopped it being the unknown. Dying is made special in this book because it is given back its precious highly emotionally charged as well as matter of fact place in life.

Although it is primarily about death, it is also very much about life – about living your life to the full, by not fearing death when it ultimately comes:.

I bought this book out of a sense of duty because of my work with Pilgrims Hospices but now I have read it I want to share it with you. I truly believe each person should read this book; the stories are heartbreaking but the lessons are forever. They show how the dying embrace living not because they are unusual or brave, but because that s what humans do. Tears were never far from my eyes as I read about a head teacher with motor neurone disease; a pair of women with metastatic breast cancer who broke their hips and ended up as hospice roommates; a beautiful young woman who didn’t want to stop wearing her skinny jeans even though they were exacerbating her nerve pain, as then she’d feel like she’d given up; and a husband and wife who each thought the other didn’t know she was dying of cancer.

This awareness, which can feel vertiginous, unendurable, is also what gives us selfhood, and life shape and meaning. It’s clear she feels she’s been honored to work with the dying, and she’s helped to propagate a healthy approach to death. Interestingly centred around the time when the perspective of life and meaning are under scrutiny and question.Modern, sanitised death becomes a dirty little secret, almost embarrassing: our language circles round it, we don’t like to name it, cross the road to avoid those recently touched by it, and shy away from the physical, squeamish fact of it, so that the dead body is whisked away, frequently embalmed (for fear of its smell), cremated in “facilities” that are often in industrial zones. This was compounded by her discussion of euthanasia, a subject that is obviously very relevant in this context.

I can’t say enough about what a comfort this book was to me - it used knowledge and stories to take the fear away of what may come, and how to face those times with calm and reassurance, grace and finality. Unfortunately in our society we seem to have become afraid of dying and being able to talk to people facing death.Really this is the kind of book I would like to own a copy of and read steadily, just a chapter a week.