I am pleased to have a new author visit my blog today with a non-fiction self-help book on death and dying. While it’s not a subject we like to talk about, it’s an unavoidable reality and her book offers some insight. Welcome, Becky!
Thank you, Jan, for inviting me here to talk about my new book. I appreciate your generosity.
I spent my pandemic writing about all things death.
Although I had interfaced with death throughout my personal and professional life, everything changed when my dear soul-connect brother died of brain cancer in January of 2017. At that time my 94-year-old mother lived with us and was on her end-of-life trajectory, experiencing a truly magical, mindful death nine months later in our home in New Zealand.
Always one to tell me the stories of how things were done in the “olden days,” my mother had repeated throughout my life that she felt an unease with how death had become such a business in the US. When my father died in 1983, she had been aghast at the price tag involved. Just bury me in a cardboard box became my mother’s mantra when conversations surrounding death arose.
Throughout his life, my brother had an affinity for simple practicalities: growing his own food, following his heart rather than trends, a pull to the simple ways of our ancestors. The youngest of my three older brothers, he was seven years older than me. Growing up in a violent household, he’d been my anchor and when I finally fled, into my own young adult life, he was my savior. We knew each other in a way only foxhole companions with a loving, protective bond could ...
Read the rest HERE