Synopsis:
A reassuring and thoroughly researched guide to maintaining a high quality of life--from resilient old age to the first inklings of a serious illness to the final breath--by the New York Times bestselling author of Knocking on Heaven's Door. The Art of Dying Well is about living as well as possible for as long as possible and adapting successfully to change. Packed with extraordinarily helpful insights and inspiring true stories, award-winning journalist and prominent end-of-life speaker Katy Butler shows how to thrive in later life (even when coping with a chronic medical condition), how to get the best from our health system, and how to make your own "good death" more likely. This handbook of step by step preparations--practical, communal, physical, and sometimes spiritual--will help you make the most of your remaining time, be it decades, years, or months.
Butler explains how to successfully age in place, why to pick a younger doctor and how to have an honest conversation with her, when
not to call 911, and how to make your death a sacred rite of passage rather than a medical event.
This down-to-earth manual for living, aging, and dying with meaning and even joy is based on Butler's own experience caring for aging parents, as well as hundreds of interviews with people who have successfully navigated a fragmented health system and helped their loved ones have good deaths. It also draws on interviews with nationally recognized experts in family medicine, palliative care, geriatrics, oncology, hospice, and other medical specialties. Inspired by the medieval death manual
Ars Moriendi, or the Art of Dying,
The Art of Dying Well is the definitive update for our modern age, and illuminates the path to a better end of life.
Review:
"Knocking on Heaven's Door is a thoroughly researched and compelling mix of personal narrative and hard-nosed reporting that captures just how flawed care at the end of life has become."--Abraham Verghese "New York Times Book Review "
"This is a book so honest, so insightful and so achingly beautiful that its poetic essence transcends even the anguished story that it tells. Katy Butler's perceptive intellect has probed deeply, and seen into the many troubling aspects of our nation's inability to deal with the reality of dying in the 21st century: emotional, spiritual, medical, financial, social, historical and even political. And yet, though such valuable insights are presented with a journalist's clear eye, they are so skillfully woven into the narrative of her beloved parents' deaths that every sentence seems to come from the very wellspring of the human spirit that is in her."--Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland, author of How We Die: Reflections of Life's Final Chapter
"This is some of the most important material I have read in years, and so beautifully written. It is riveting, and even with parents long gone, I found it very hard to put down. ... I am deeply grateful for its truth, wisdom, and gorgeous stories--some heartbreaking, some life-giving, some both at the same time. Butler is an amazing and generous writer. This book will change you, and, I hope, our society."--Anne Lamott "author of Help, Thanks, Wow "
"Shimmer[s] with grace, lucid intelligence, and solace."--Lindsey Crittenden "Spirituality and Health Magazine "
"[A] deeply felt book...[Butler] is both thoughtful and passionate about the hard questions she raises -- questions that most of us will at some point have to consider. Given our rapidly aging population, the timing of this tough and important book could not be better."--Laurie Hertzel "Minneapolis Star Tribune "
"This braid of a book...examines the battle between death and the imperatives of modern medicine. Impeccably reported, Knocking on Heaven's Door grapples with how we need to protect our loved ones and ourselves."--More Magazine
"A forthright memoir on illness and investigation of how to improve end-of-life scenarios. With candidness and reverence, Butler examines one of the most challenging questions a child may face: how to let a parent die with dignity and integrity. Honest and compassionate..."--Kirkus Reviews
"Katy Butler's science background and her gift for metaphor make her a wonderfully engaging storyteller, even as she depicts one of our saddest but most common experiences: that of a slow death in an American hospital. Knocking on Heaven's Door is a terrible, beautiful book that offers the information we need to navigate the complicated world of procedure and technology-driven health care."--Mary Pipher "author of Reviving Ophelia and Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World "
"Katy Butler's new book--brave, frank, poignant, and loving--will encourage the conversation we, as a society, desperately need to have about better ways of dying. From her own closely-examined personal experience, she fearlessly poses the difficult questions that sooner or later will face us all."--Adam Hochschild "author of King Leopold's Ghost and To End All Wars "
"This is the most important book you and I can read. It is not just about dying, it is about life, our political and medical system, and how to face and address the profound ethical and personal issues that we encounter as we care for those facing dying and death. [This book's] tenderness, beauty, and heart-breaking honesty matches the stunning data on dying in the West. A splendid and compassionate endeavor."--Joan Halifax, PhD, Founding Abbot, Upaya Institute/Zen Center and Director, Project on Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death
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