A book Review

Final Gifts by Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley

To continue to post and hopefully to spur some conversation, I thought a book review might be a good idea.  If I am going to be working with the dying, it seems that I should learn as much as possible about what happens with death and dying.  I recently finished reading Final Gifts by Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley.  The authors, hospice nurses, use vignettes about dying patients to make their points, and very effectively too. 

My major take away -- there are things you can learn from the dying if you listen.  It may be something they want to tell you, it may be a glimpse into the next “world,” or that the dying will die on their own terms, retaining some level of control.  No matter what, there is something to be learned from the dying, if you are lucky enough to be there and listening carefully.

While I have known for a long time that the dying can prolong or hasten their own departure, many of the patients discussed in the book have made this point even clearer to me.  Sometimes the dying wait to see someone they love.  Sometimes they wait to resolve a particular situation. One case discussed in the book was about a husband, who waited until his daughter was at his house with his wife before he passed.  He didn’t want his wife to be alone when he died.  He protected and cared for her until his final breath.  For those around the dying, I think it is important to know that they may be trying to tell you something.  For those who may be dying, I wonder if there is any comfort in knowing that you can retain some level of control.  However, overwhelmingly clear in the book is that the dying often have business to take care of.       

The authors spend a lot of time discussing near death awareness, which is not the same as a near death experience.  Near death awareness is an ability to see or feel what happens after this life is over.  It is as if the patient is living in-between two worlds.  They are not quite done here on earth yet they haven’t yet made it to the next world.  The patients discussed could never fully describe “over there,” but knew it was a good place to be, that they would see others they loved who had passed, and that it was beautiful.  More than that seemed to fade as they were drawn back to this world.  The other interesting facet discussed in relation to near death awareness was that often we assume that those that are close to death are not lucid, when they talk in a way we don’t understand.  It could be that they aren’t really “here” and therefore what they are seeing or reacting to is not something we can understand.  In the end, we probably should not assume they are “crazy,” but that they are experiencing something we can not understand. 

This book tackles a tough topic in a way that really brings home the messages the authors are trying to share.  By using individual patient experiences, the reader can visualize each of the patients and their experiences. It is a very successful way of sharing this important information.  

Thanks for reading

JMB