Читать книгу Before We Say Goodbye: Preparing for a Good Death - Ray Simpson - Страница 5

Life is a journey from the womb to the tomb.

There are things to learn that make the journey, even at its end, worthwhile.

To live well requires us to die well.

If we are to die well, we need to prepare for it.

We are all dying. Some of us die sooner than others.

The best time to start to prepare for death is when we are young.

Please don’t die without having lived.

Please don’t depart without having said truly satisfying goodbyes.

The airliner went into a nose dive. A maniac had attacked the pilot and broken the autopilot. Every passenger was convinced they were plunging to certain death. Lady Anabel Goldsmith was on that plane. In seats behind her were her son Zak, her daughter Jemima Khan, and her grandchildren. A myriad things she would have liked to have said and done before they parted this life flashed through her mind, but it seemed too late now. She had time to utter only one word to them: ‘Goodbye.’ By some miracle the plane, only seconds from disaster, was saved. Lady Anabel was given a second chance to get things right before she said goodbye.

This book offers us a chance to get things right before we say goodbye. It may be our only chance. Although we can run away from almost anything in life, we cannot run away from death. So much has been written about how to cope with other people’s deaths. So little has been written about preparing for our own death. Those books that have been written are not the sort you would hold in your hand, or keep in your heart, when you are too weak to take in new information. This simple, practical guide comes from one heart to another. It calls us to live and to die well, to be good stewards of our short time on earth.

There are as many ways of dying as there are people. This little book will help you to plan your final journey, your farewells, your funeral and your will in a way that will uniquely bless you and those around you. Some are too fearful or thoughtless to do this. This book will help you to do it gently, in small doses.

Dying itself is a journey. We cannot halt it, but we may influence the spirit in which we make it. We can learn from enlightened people who have made glorious exits. We can learn from practitioners who have studied the cycles of dying. We can learn from the caring insights of the hospice movement. And now that hospital and funeral services are business oriented, we can be part of a citizens’ movement to take back responsibility for our own and our loved ones’ departures.