Dr. BJ Miller

When reading A Beginner's Guide to the End know that there's a heavy emphasis on the word 'Practical' in the subtitle. This book has everything, and I mean nearly everything, you need to know about the end-of-life. And the information here is for any of the potential roles one will inevitably find themselves in now or in the future—a caregiver, a surviving family member or friend, or even the one who's dying.

The book is cleverly arranged in a chronological layout. The beginning chapters discuss seemingly far-off considerations such as wills and estate planning while the end chapters discuss oft-neglected considerations in the days, months and years after death has occurred.… (mer)

First of all: Don't freak out or be sad -- while I do have stage 4 cancer, I'm not planning on dying anytime soon. Second of all: (Spoiler alert) We are all going to die, and so are all our loved ones. This book was described to me as a 'What to Expect When You're Expecting," but for dying instead of for giving birth, and that's pretty accurate! Written by a hospice doctor and a journalist / caregiver, this easy and (honestly) fun-to-read book covers the usual things like writing a will and getting your affairs in order but goes WAY beyond what other books in this category cover. Topics include emotional things like dealing with a diagnosis or grief, and practical things like symptom management, what to bring to the hospital, what dying is actually like, how many copies of a death certificate to request, funeral / burial options, and what services you can expect from hospice. As someone on the patient side of things, I really appreciated that the majority of the book was written directly to the patient, with sidebars for the caregivers, and didn't diminish our agency in this whole process. And as a librarian I loved the lists of resources by topic at the end of the book, as well as the very well crafted index. Overall it is just a remarkably clear-eyed, caring, practical, and comforting guide to something that comes into everyone's life more than once, but which we, as a culture, never want to face head on. If you are caring for an aging parent, dealing with your own illness, or are blessed enough to be hitting old age, this is a good book for you. Highly recommended.… (mer)

This book is something precious, and as far as I know unique -- a practical and compassionate guide to dealing with death. That's not something that most people want to think about, so there is a tendency to avoid the subject until it can't be avoided any longer. Then, too many of us have to take complicated steps and make difficult decisions in the midst of emotional turmoil and physical suffering. This book enables someone who is facing death (which is all of us, of course) to see the steps -- financial, legal, medical, and emotional -- which we need to take, and set about taking them. I wish I had had this book when my mother died, and when dear friends died. Now, I am facing my husband's death due to illness, and my own due to old age, and I DO have this book. I find it very enlightening -- here is what you need to do -- and very comforting. I've been recommending it to all my friends, my family and my doctors: can't praise it highly enough.… (mer)