A collection of stories, poems, short memoirs, and expository pieces about people's direct experiences with death and dying. From a death professionals like clergy and a mortician to a police officer seeing his first young person killed in a car accident; from a child whose parent commits suicide to a child who experiences one parent murdering the other; from Iraq and Lebanon and Bosnia and the United States these stories are moving and instructive. A section tells how different religions treat death is helpful in knowing how to relate to friends of various religious identities. Written by people in the U.S, Middle East, Europe, India, and Australia, and including deaths by illness, war, police or gang violence, suicide, murder, this collection of short pieces will assist the living to better grieve as they experience the mortality of those they love (and their own mortality) whatever way it comes.

Authors:

Donald Betts, Jr.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Julie Ann Baker Brin

Sharon Hill Cranford

J. Rae Rice-Cranford

Brian Daldorph

Robert L. Dean, Jr.

Aida Dziho-Sator

Charles (Ohiyesa) Eastman

Gretchen Cassel Eick

Richard Eick

Eyyup Essen

Cammie Funston

Linda Gebert

Edward Ernest Goode

Michael D. Graves

Hafiz

Judy Keller Hatteberg

George Hough

Tom Hull

Miriam Iwashige

Billy Dee Johnston

Mohan Kambampati

Erin Kyna

Ruth Maus

Najiyah Maxfield

Mark McCormick

Ronda Miller

Amena Mohamad

Susan Moir

John Monroe-Cassel

Jim Potter

Cora Poage

Michael Poage

Rumi

Mark Scheel

Julie Stielstra

Janet Jenkins-Stotts

Maaskelah Kimit Thomas

Diane Wahto

Phillip Wood