Compassionate care is about more than care for the ill and infirm, more than the services delivered and more than the heart of the caregiver. It is about the emptying of oneself for the benefit of another. How then does the caregiver refill their reservoir of love, recharge so that they can give more? How does the dying man or woman contemplate their own passing? How do family members and friends come to terms with the loss of a loved one?
A Life Well Lived, A Death Well Met, a collection of musings, prose and poetry, provides caregivers, the ill and infirm and their family members and friends comfort, support and inspiration in the quiet moments, both before death has arrived and after it has come and gone. “Death and I are old friends,” I say in the introduction to the book, having had my own near-death experience at the age of five, when I drowned in the Russian River. Since then, I have sat beside with countless others, both as a family member and friend and as a certified hospice volunteer.
I have a website, williamholsinger.com, as well as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram presences where musings from the book can found, along with other ongoing work about aging, death and dying. Frank Ostaseski, author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, says of the book:
“A lovely collection of personal poetry and present-day parables by one who regularly bears witness to death with a sincere heart. A lyrical reminder that like birth, death is unique. There is no one right way to meet living and dying. Only our own way.”
Let me know you’re if interested and I will send you some of the musings from the book at no charge. Here’s the last entry:
unlit the candle waits
burning, the candle lights
a small corner of the world
and slowly dies
Namaste’
