...A putative guide to what happens to the body as it dies and directly after — and how to care for it. How to touch someone who is dying. How to carry a body and wash it. How to remove its dentures ... It should be noted that this book is not for the queasy. Frankly, neither is dying. Tisdale writes calm but explicit descriptions of 'the faint leathery smell' of dead bodies and the process of decomposition. 'A dead body is alive in a new way, a busy place full of activity,' she writes ... Tisdale does not write to allay anxieties but to acknowledge them, and she brings death so close, in such detail and with such directness, that something unusual happens, something that feels a bit taboo. She invites not just awe or dread — but our curiosity. And why not? We are, after all, just 'future corpses pretending we don’t know.'
A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying, she confronts the most difficult subject of all. And -we like to think -the most mysterious. She’ll buy half of that: 'I have never died, so this entire book is a fool’s advice.' But only half: 'We are future corpses pretending we don’t know.' In 240 pages, she tells us what we need to know. Without New Age feel-good cosmology. With no inspirational message. Just liberating facts, great stories and eye-opening practicality. It’s about dying better - and about living better.
The book is written in a gentle tone, but without euphemisms, as you would hope to hear from the person who sits beside to tell you that you are going to die. Someday. That is Tisdale's mission, as is the mission of the 'good death' movement ... Tisdale is as plainspoken about grief as she is about the process of moving toward death. This, too, is refreshing ... Tisdale offers some scientific evidence that grief is large and luminous.
Tisdale, a former nurse, offers an intimate insider’s look at dying, aimed at both caregivers and mortally ill people. By turns philosophical and pragmatic, Tisdale gently prods readers to make plans while they can. She meditates on the possibility of procuring a 'good death,' surveys body disposal practices from different times and cultures, and compassionately illustrates her themes with anecdotes from the lives and deaths of close friends ... Tisdale’s forthright narrative voice, charmingly bossy in style ('Be very careful about odors.... You don’t want to be the most nauseating thing that happens in the day'), is so generous and kind in spirit that readers will gladly follow along.
