by John Byrne Barry | Oct 24, 2019 | End of Life
One of Reimagine End of Life SF’s more than 200 events is a performance by Gina Harris called “The Magic of Ordinary Things.” I met Gina in September at a collaborators meeting in San Francisco and spoke with on the phone earlier this month.
You’re performing “The Magic of Ordinary Things” at the end of this month. Tell me more about your event.
My show is a solo performance inspired by losing three of the most important people in my life. I call it a musical memoir — about how I struggled through grief and found happiness and a home inside myself.
Although the show is about loss, it’s not a melancholic show. It’s about how tender, wonderful and funny people can be together.
I note that you say it’s not melancholic. It’s almost as if you have to say that because people assume that if you’re dealing with grief and death, it will be heavy.
Yes, loss and memories are so much more than melancholy. There is that, of course, but also love and laughter and the moments we were close (are close still!) with those who have died.
How did you start writing the show?
I’ve been a performer for years in Los Angeles, on Broadway and in jazz clubs in The Bay Area, so performing and writing are part of who I am. Then I lost my father, my mother, and my singing teacher, who was like a mother to me — and it felt like it happened all at once.
As I kept going with the songwriting and singing, I felt like the songs tapped me on the shoulder and said, “hey we’re a show.”
I was putting together this show together last year when I heard Brad interviewed. [Brad Wolfe is the executive director of Reimagine End of Life.]
You said this show grew out of your grief. How did you go from grief to creation of your show? Wasn’t that a painful process?
It was a baffling and mysterious process. I kept living my life, but where the hell did my people go? I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t bear that they were dead.
So I thought about when they were alive. I wrote songs. The songs were more about who they were in life. Who we were together.
I felt so alone. I asked myself, was I a good daughter? These songs were a way of coming back. They came from pain. The benefit was that I remembered my loved ones better. I got to know them better through writing the songs and singing them. My relationship with my parents deepened after they died. I thought and felt so much about what we had done together, how we had been together.
I was the closest companion for both my parents. First my Mother and Father and me. Then my Mother and me. Then Lilian, my Singing Teacher, and me.
Will this be the first time you’ve performed the show?
Yes, this show is premiering for Reimagine. Though I’ve sung some of the songs before. I put the songs together and wove them into a story.
What do you hope participants will get out of this?
Exactly the word you said. Hope.
What would you say has surprised you most about what you’re doing? What have you learned?
It reminded me of how much I learned from my parents, and about my parents. I would say relationships between Mothers and daughters can be fraught with tension. I was her only child. She was trying to fix me, which I resisted. I always loved her. Doing the show reminded me of her love for me and mine for her.
What do you do when you’re not performing a musical memoir?
I’m a vocal coach and I’m a singer-songwriter.
Tell me again where and when.
It’s at the Phoenix Theater on October 30 (Wednesday), November 1 (Friday), and November 2 (Sunday). The Phoenix is at 414 Mason. Suite 601.
by John Byrne Barry | Oct 18, 2019 | End of Life
One of Reimagine End of Life SF’s more than 200 events is a storytelling gathering in Berkeley led by Laura Turbow and Rachael Friedman of Still Life Stories. I met Laura in September at a gathering of “collaborators” at The Laundry in San Francisco and spoke with on the phone earlier this week.
Your upcoming event is called “What They Left Behind: A Night of Storytelling.” Tell me more about it.
We hope our gathering will give people time to think about loved ones who’ve passed away.
I’m a big fan of The Moth, live storytelling and our event is Moth-like. We are asking participants to bring an object and a story to share. Unlike the Moth, you can use notes. you don’t need to memorize your story. The idea is that the story is about someone who has died, and the object is a way you remember them.
In our business, Still Life Stories, we use objects as springboards to tell stories about our lives as well as the lives of people important to us who have died.
Can you give me an example of an object that might turn into a story.
Here’s one I love. A friend, her husband Jon passed away while their daughters were still young. She had a box of Jon’s things, which included a broken plastic camera. If the girls were to find that camera, it would mean nothing to them. But it has a story. Jon had been in Africa, in the Peace Corps, and she went to visit him, and when she was there, they were out in the jungles and Jon was taking photos with this camera when they were chased by gorillas.
So the object might have little meaning by itself, but the story gives it meaning?
Exactly. This whole idea for Still Life Stories, which we started three years ago, came from a client who asked me to photograph a sweater. She had kept it for decades. It was not in good shape anymore. It had meaning, but she was never going to wear it, so she had me photograph it so she could let it go. She felt that she could let it go if she had a photograph of it and told the story. So the photo, or the object itself, can lead to the story.
How did you come to be involved in the end-of-life movement?
We found out about it last year. My partner, Rachel Friedman, and I contributed a few photographs to the Reimagine art gallery last year. We also did some photography and interviewing at some of the events.
What do you hope participants will get out of your gathering? Do they have to have something prepared in advance?
I want it to be a community night — they hear something that strikes them, they have a chance to share. I have a great belief in storytelling. I hope this will also be a way of giving time to people who have passed away. There’s mourning and sometimes with stories, you can tap into those who have died after they’ve gone.
What would you say has surprised you most about what you’re doing? What have you learned?
You know it sort of like things coming out of the closet. It’s hard for people to talk about dying and death. This whole Reimagine End of Life idea is like an awakening to death. It turns it on its head. It’s a more accepting approach. So many of us deny the idea of death, but that can make us us crazy. Accepting death is easier than denying it.
I have this big place for gratitude in my mind and my heart. I’m grateful for many joyful experiences. But my mind can go from having gratitude and at the same time to an anxious feeling of loss and “what-ifs.” Especially if I think about people I know who have died. I’m happy to be alive. I feel lucky to have all the gratitude. But it’s a muscle we have to work. My father-in-law is a former oncologist who helped his patients with end of life, death and dying worked his gratitude muscle every day and is a person who now regularly leans in toward gratitude.
Have you done this before?
No. We started our business three years ago, but this is our first big, live storytelling gathering. We do have two lead storytellers to help get it going. We’re really hoping people will come with objects and stories.
I think Reimagine is ahead of the curve as far as getting the conversation about death out there on the table for us all to digest. But we’ve made progress. Remember, for a long time, you would whisper the word cancer. Now you can say it out loud.
Tell me again where and when.
In Berkeley at Congregation Beth-El, 1301 Oxford Street, Wednesday, October 30, at 7 pm. We hope to see you there.
Storytelling allows people to feel connected. It’s important for people to tell their stories, important for them to be heard. It’s important to honor those who have passed away. We don’t talk about the dead as much as we could.
by John Byrne Barry | Aug 28, 2019 | End of Life
A CONVERSATION WITH SPIRITUAL SUPPORT COUNSELOR PHILIP ROUNTREE
At one time Philip Roundtree, a minister turned hospice counselor, owned 52 guitars. He has sold most of them, but he still brings one with him when he visits his hospice patients. I met him for coffee in Mill Valley earlier this year to ask him about his work.
I see that you are a Spiritual Support Counselor, and that you offer “sympathy, counsel, music, and magical moments to dying people and their families.” That’s good.
I didn’t write that.
It was on LinkedIn.
Then maybe it was me.
You were a Episcopal minister for many years. How did you come to work in hospice?
I did 32 years of full-time church work. I retired at 57, to seek new adventure. When I heard Hospice by the Bay had an opening, I jumped in.
What is your day like?
I’m a circuit rider. Two-third home based and one-third nursing homes and facilities. I have 48 patients, mostly off 101 between Marin and Healdsburg, plus a few in Napa and Sonoma Valley. Fortunately, I like to drive. I usually visit about 18 patients a week.
Tell me about the visits.
There are the people who can’t talk or communicate. Those visits are shorter, but I always treat them like they’re fully there, like they’re listening to everything I say. I entertain them. If I ascertain through family members they have a religious orientation, I go in that direction. I tell stories. Pray with them. Play music and sing.
I was going to ask about the guitar.
My boss said bring a guitar. There’s a great documentary on Netflix called Alive Inside, about how people who seem to be uncommunicative can come alive because of music. Especially if I play an old song like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
My repertoire is folk, pop, rock from the 60s on, but I’ve been learning older music like Frank Sinatra.
There was one woman with severe dementia who had been non-responsive for fifteen years. I visited her faithfully every two weeks, told her stories, played her songs, and then played her this new song. I told her, I just learned this. I’m not sure what it means. What do you think?
She just started talking. Nonsense, but looking at me.
I said to her, you’re an amazing woman, because you’re been trapped in your body for so many years.
From your vantage point, does it seem like there’s progress in how we deal with end-of-life?
I’ve only been doing this for two years, but I dealt with hospice for 30-plus years as a minister. There used to be a lot more stigma. We used to not tell people they were dying. Calling hospice was considered the kiss of death. Now it’s completely different.
Hospice by the Bay is now branching out into palliative care, which is more longer-term alleviation of suffering, but not curative.
Can you clarify the difference?
It means you’re not going to get healthy and dance again, but you’re not dying yet.
When you sign on with hospice, you get a whole team of people, you get me, you get several grades of nurses, home health aides, a social worker to help you navigate the bureaucracy. You’re assigned a doctor too. You may not see the doctor, but we’re using Zoom a lot, so you might have a face to face with the doctor while he’s still in his office. You can even show the doc the wound on your arm.
When we were trained, they said that when people find out you work with hospice, you hear one of two things. One, which you hear most of the time, oh hospice is wonderful, they took care of my mother, they were great. Or, hospice gave her morphine. They killed her.
What about the family? Talking about death. Is there resistance?
People can always opt out of hospice. Get one more round of aggressive treatment.
But generally, people understand they’re in the final chapter. That’s how I frame it. I say, this is the final six months, how do you feel about that? How can I help?
Those who are verbal and lucid, do some of them reflect on dying? My dad died young, of liver cancer, when he was 63. I remember asking him something like, do you think about your life? He said no. That was a conversation stopper.
How do you get people talking?
I talk to them the way I might at a cocktail party. Where did you grow up? What have you experienced? This sometimes leads to exploring their spirituality. I’ve been fortunate that some patients who had lost all spiritual connection confided in me that they wished they had it back. I said it’s not gone.
There was a lady who recently died. She was ready. I saw her six hours before she died. When I first saw her, she was very ill — her designation was “imminent,” which meant within the week. When I introduced myself, she said, I don’t want anything to do with religion. I said fine. A couple weeks went by and she got better and we took a liking to each other. I asked about her religious history. She was raised Catholic, and she got divorced, and then met someone, and wanted to get married within the church. Get her first marriage annulled. She got the standard line from the local church, well, annulments are hard to get, however, if you make a such-and-such gift, fifty thousand to the building fund, we can expedite the process. That infuriated her. She renounced religion.
I asked if she’d be interested in getting reconnected. She said yes. We wound up having a great time. I told her stories. She would have a list of questions. I sang. We prayed together. We exchanged Christmas gifts. She was just such a beautiful, transcendent person.
But how do you talk to someone who’s dying? When I lived in Berkeley, my neighbor Leona was dying. I remember how uncomfortable I felt knocking on the door and visiting her. So I didn’t. I still feel guilty about it. I didn’t know what to say.
That’s what keeps a lot of people away. The number one complaint, if you will.
One of my old parishioners called me up two weeks ago, said he had a friend who was dying and who wanted him to visit. He didn’t know what to say. You don’t have to have a speech, I said. The gift is that you’re there. Mostly, they want to be treated like a normal person.
I was talking to a patient yesterday who has decided he’s done. He doesn’t like not being able to walk and he misses his wife. He tried to starve himself at first. That got more and more uncomfortable. He talked to doctors about the EOLOA option.
What’s that stand for?
End of Life Option Act. We don’t endorse it or try to prevent it.
I went over this laundry list with this guy. Do you want a service, funeral? What he wanted was to see what’s on the other side.
What about that, afterlife? Promising something could be—
No, no. Nobody knows what happens. There are clues in scriptures. The people who are definite about it are making it up. If they have a Christian or Jewish orientation, i just say, there are clues on the other side, you might want to buckle up for an adventure.
The man I was talking to yesterday, mostly he wants to see his wife.
Sounds like this work requires a great deal of empathy. Is that something you can grow?
Two years in, I’m still working on my presentation. At the beginning, I have to sell myself. If they’re at home, I have to call and make an appointment.
My latest line is that everyone else that comes in has a specific job for you. Mine is the larger picture, the whole mind-body-spirit connection. And you don’t have to have any religious affiliation.
Are you present for death?
Not usually, but twice. Almost by accident. I might give them the last rites, but I don’t really stick around.
Not everyone wants to die in a room full of people. I remember a family in church. They brought the mom home, had a vigil. The daughter was in the room with her mom, by herself. She left for the bathroom. When she came back, her mother was gone.
I’m curious about how you give of yourself with these people and deal with the fact that they’re all going to die. How do you balance making an emotional connection and taking care of yourself.
Hospice tells us not to get attached. But I do. Not to all of them. But I care about them all. I want their last chapter of life to be as beautiful as it can be. Whatever I can do to enhance that.
I know you’re not supposed to fix things, in the medical area anyway, but I imagine people have unfinished business. Do you address that? Are you supposed to?
My official job is to provide comfort, solace, and facilitation to bring the patient and family to the end. However, when I walk into a conflicted family system, if I think I can enhance the whole end-of-life experience, I try. Recently, there was this very old woman who refused to die. You’re supposed to live less than 6 months after you get booked with hospice. She was frail — a gust of wind would have blown her over — but she kept on going, for more than a year. She had a daughter who apparently resented her for some past wrongs, and we talked, I said maybe you can speak to your daughter about that. So she did. She apologized to her.
Later, I spoke to the daughter, and I said, I understand your mom apologized to you, and she burst into tears and gave me a big hug. It made everything go easier.
by John Byrne Barry | Jul 27, 2019 | End of Life
Kate DeBartolo is the Director of the Conversation Project, an initiative of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). We spoke over the phone early this year.
Can you tell me about your personal journey to focusing on dying and end-of-life care?
I’ve worked at IHI (Institute for Healthcare Improvement) for 12 years, facilitating large scale adoption of best-practices in a clinical setting, so I had already dealt with a variety of healthcare topics before coming to the Conversation Project. Now I’ve been doing this six years, and I love the topic. I’m drawn not only for the experience of the person who dies, but how to live in those final years and how to support the bereaved.
There are also so many fabulous nurses and others working in this field. Addressing our mortality. They are such kind people.
Tell me about the Conversation Project, how it started, and what its mission is.
The Conversation Project was founded by Ellen Goodman, a Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist, who was the caregiver for her mother, who was unable to speak for herself in the final years, and who had never discussed her wishes for end-of-life care. All the decisions fell to Ellen.
After her mother’s death, Ellen got together with her peers, her colleagues in the media, along with healthcare and religious leaders, and learned that, unfortunately, her experience was not unique. In her conversations, she noted there were differences between what people called “good death” and “bad death,” and having conversations about end-of-life care was a common characteristic of the good deaths.
That’s when she came to IHI with this project. IHI is a nonprofit focused on how to improve health and health care worldwide. The Conversation Projects approaches things from two sides — we hope all wishes are expressed and respected.
So the patients have to say what matters most to them and the institution should respect what they say. Improvements depend on both parties.
We do not have a preference for a particular kind of care. But the idea is that we have these conversations, as Ellen says, around the kitchen table, not in the ICU. Doesn’t have to be the kitchen table, and maybe we should have called it the Conversations Project because it’s usually a series of conversations. We help people start them wherever they are.
We provide starter kits to help people get ready for the conversation. There are questions to help clarify what you want at the end of your life, and identifying who you want to talk to and when and where would be most conducive.
One way to break the ice is a simple statement: “I need your help with something.” Or, “I just answered some questions about what matters most to me at the end of life, and I want you to see my answers.” The important thing is to get started. Ellen also says, “it’s always too soon, until it’s too late.”
I signed up for your email list this morning and got an introductory email with a link to your starter kit. One thing that struck me was that 92 percent of people feel like having this end-of-life conversation is important but only 32 percent have it. Why do you think that is? How do we make that number higher?
The good news is that number has shifted. Not long ago, it was 27 percent. We’re talking about adults, over 18. So that means 12 million more Americans are having that conversations than a few years ago.
Why do you think so many are not having that conversation? To an outsider, it seems like there’s so much more going on with this end-of-life movement than there used to, but it also seems like it’s invisible to the mainstream society.
There are a variety of reason. One is they don’t want to offend people. Or they have other things that are more pressing. They may imagine it’s something they have to get an estate attorney to deal with.
There’s a growing movement, but there are also reasons that it’s now more acceptable than it’s been.
Remember the death panel framing from the 2008/2009 debate about the Affordable Care Act? That was in reference to policies that would allow Medicare to reimburse clinicians for conversations with patients about their wishes for care at the end of life.
Those conversations are covered by Medicare now, with bipartisan support. The popular culture is spreading the word — best-selling books like Being Mortal and When Breath Becomes Air. The short films Extremis and End Game were nominated for Oscars.
Baby boomers are seeing what is happening with their parents and they have opinions on whether they do or don’t want similar care for themselves. Keep in mind, too, that it’s only in the past few decades that we’ve had the technology to allow us to make many of these decisions. We aren’t well-versed in these conversations, because we didn’t used to have much say in the type of care we would receive.
I’m very much a supporter of your approach, and getting people to talk about death. But is there evidence to support that?
Absolutely there is. Now more than 50 percent of people who have these conversations report feelings of release and comfort. And it’s not just the person dying who benefits, but their loved ones too. Depression rates are lower after the loss of a loved one if they’ve had the conversation.
We do note that this topic historically resonated more with higher income, higher educated individuals, and we’re working to not further that divide.
How are you doing that?
One way we’re addressing that is to be sure that our team is representative of the audience we’re aiming to reach.
There’s been this progression from doing thing to, for, and now with. It used to be medical professionals did things to patients, then it shifted to for patients. Now we’re trying to make it with patients.
We now say here’s what I’m doing with you, not for you.
We’re also having conversations with the disabled community to make sure we’re getting it right for them.
I watched the video of Ellen Goodman talking about the genesis of the Conversation Project and how the experts you brought in said you needed to get outside the medical community into the broader culture and change the norm from not talking about the end of life to talking about it. How are you doing that?
For us, there are three approaches. One is building awareness with the public through traditional media, social media, podcasts, and so on. We keep trying to make our project more visible.
Second is we provide content and tools about related issues, like dealing with dementia. We have various questions to help figure out what people want. Like, on a scale of 1 to 5, are you concerned about too much health care, or too little care?
Third is we reach people where they live, work, and pray. We bring it to local libraries. We connect with regional leaders who can translate it to their area. We do a lot of work with religious congregations. And we do a lot of training. People learn from other people, then share it.
Another way is to not start with talking about death, but talk about what kind of life you want. How do you want to live your life as you approach the end? A lot of people understand the concept of health care proxy. If something unexpected happens to you, who’s going to speak for you? Do they know you want? Do you know what you want?
Sometimes it might be chocolate ice cream. One woman who was caring for dad, asked him what he wanted. He said as long I can watch college football and eat chocolate ice cream, I want to stick around.
(This ice cream and football quote, Kate said, should be attributed to its original source — Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande.)
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Find out more at theconversationproject.org.
by John Byrne Barry | Jun 27, 2019 | End of Life
On a spring afternoon at the Mill Valley Library, more than fifty people filled the Creekside Room to talk about death. Leading the discussion was Dr. Dawn Gross, UCSF Palliative Medicine Physician, who also hosts the KALW radio podcast series, “Dying To Talk.”
I spoke with her on the phone the week after the workshop.
Tell me about your journey to focus on death and dying.
When I went to medical school, I did so as a scientist. I had no interest in practicing medicine. My father was an administrator for Kaiser Hospital and he told me the doctors hated him. What kind of people would hate my father? I didn’t want to be one of them.
My scientific mentors steered me toward an MD and PhD, in immunology. When I finally started seeing patients, what I learned was counterintuitive. Don’t touch patients. That made me second guess myself.
I was on a clinical rotation when I first witnessed a patient about to die, and I was ready to burst into tears. I left the room, went into the hallway, and cried. The supervising clinician found me and said, “Don’t ever do that again. And don’t think I don’t go home and cry every night.”
But later that year, I watched a doctor leap onto the exam table next to her patient and put her arm around her. Oh, I thought, you can do that?
I picked the subspecialty of bone marrow transplants, because every single patient is a new immunological puzzle. I had no med school training in bone marrow transplant, and it was a steep learning curve. I started seeing people die and I was a deer in the headlights. We knew they were going to die, but we didn’t talk about it. I remember this one young man, seeing him on rounds. When we walked out of his room, my attending said, he’s going to die. I was thinking, what did he see that I didn’t? But what stayed with me most was that we didn’t tell him that he was dying.
We didn’t talk about it as a team after he died. It didn’t occur to me that we could do that. We didn’t have the language.
Around that time, my father became terminally ill, and that shifted my orientation.
I remember my father saying to me, “why is no one asking me what I want?”
He knew he was dying, and I realized that he had started an advance care conversation with me when I was a child. One day he had taken me to work, at Kaiser in Oakland. “Dawn, I want to show you something,” he said. “When people are walking down the halls, they aren’t looking at the signs, they’re looking down at their feet. I decided we should paint lines on the floor.” We stopped where the pink and green diverged. Pink was maternity. Green was intensive care. “Dawn,” he said, “I need you to know I would never want to go down the green line. I would much rather the time and money go toward my grandchildren’s education.”
At the time, I wasn’t thinking about the end of his life. I was thinking, oh, he expects grandchildren. I felt the weight of that responsibility.
For reasons I attribute to my father, I came to learn about this new specialty, hospice and palliative care. It didn’t exist when I was in medical school.
When was that?
2008 is when hospice and palliative care became a formal specialty. So fast forward, when my father died, I stopped everything. I was in the thickness of grief, and I had no resources. I reached out to the VITAS Hospice, and met the medical director, who became my mentor. “You clearly have a hospice heart,” he told me. He took me under his wing and trained me like an old-fashioned apprentice. I saw patients with him, watched his every move.
I felt like, this is what I’ve wanted to do all along. I found my people.
I’m very much a supporter of your approach, and getting people to talk about death. But is there evidence to support that?
There is. The palliative care field is looking at this. Asking questions like, did so-and-so die in accordance with their expressed wishes? The likelihood that that will be the case is correlated with whether they had conversations prior to their death. They found that those who did had better experiences than those who didn’t.
This is also true for the surrogate decision-makers, who often wonder if they made the right choices.
(Note: This study from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found that cancer patients experienced less anxiety and depression when they had end-of-life conversations.)
You work with patients who are dying. How do you balance compassion/empathy for your patients with taking care of yourself, not getting too caught up in loss. I know a cancer doc and one of her challenges is getting too emotionally invested in patients.
I reject that thinking, that physician burnout is because of being too emotionally involved. Yes, I was taught to separate my emotion, put boundaries between my patients and me, but I don’t agree with that approach.
So are we making progress in terms of getting more people talking about death? On the one hand it seems like there’s so many people and groups doing amazing things. On the other hand, most of it is invisible to mainstream society.
Well, we don’t always get a full house like we did in Mill Valley. We do see, however, that a lot of people are hungry to engage in this conversation. We have to address the challenge that for many, the word death is a turn-off.
We have to look at more accessible ways to explore end-of-life. For example, there’s this group, Reimagine End of Life, that’s hosting a week of events this fall in San Francisco. Art, music, comedy, spirituality, dancing in cemeteries, plus advance care planning. There’s a culture-changing movement going on. The first gathering was here in San Francisco in 2016. It brought together the entire spectrum of ages. There’s a millennial mindset. With the arts as an entry point.
We recently led a workshop at a high school in Oakland. Death Ed. Like sex ed, but for death. When we first approached the school, I expected they might be hesitant. But the kids were engaged.
We have to reject this assumption that death is an inappropriate subject for kids. We’re not born afraid to talk about death. We’re born curious. Kids look at their pets that have died and in that moment, they want to understand what it means. It’s how we as the adults in the room respond that makes the difference.
I remember when, as a child, our cat died, and my father told us we were fortunate that our cat came home to die with us.
Death is something sacred. Something that brings us together.
by John Byrne Barry | Apr 26, 2019 | End of Life, When I Killed My Father
I heard Ram Dass on the radio telling a story about a Chinese farmer who is too old to work in the fields any more. He sits on the porch watching his children tend to the crops.
One day, his eldest son lugs a wooden box to the porch. “We’ve got too many mouths to feed,” the son says. “Get in the box.”
The old man gets in. The son puts a lid on the box and drags it toward the cliff at the edge of the farm.
He hears a knocking from inside the box. Takes off the lid.
His father sits up. “Son, I know what you’re doing and why, but might I suggest that you lift me out of the box and throw me over the cliff. That way, the box will be there when your children need it.”
That’s not quite the theme of my upcoming novel, an assisted-suicide family thriller called Why I Killed My Father, but it’s in the same universe. Without intending to, I’m now knee deep in writing about death and dying.
A few alarmed friends have reached out and asked if I’m OK. I am. Yes, I am going to die just like everyone else, but I’m healthy and active now and I’m hoping for several decades more. But I have been devoting far more of my energy to thinking and talking and reporting about death, and it’s not as morbid as I might have expected. I know it’s a cliché, but it’s true. Being more aware of death — our own as well as others — can make life more meaningful and precious.
That said, I know that many people are not necessarily waiting in line to talk about death, let alone read a novel about death. One friend, upon hearing what I am working on, said, “I’ll pass and wait on your next effort.”
I was disappointed to hear that, but I get it. Which is why I’ve worked hard to make this book as entertaining as possible. I call it a “page-turner with a conscience” — it moves like a thriller, but without explosions. Well, I guess there are explosions of a sort.
If all goes well, the book will be out this fall. You can read Chapter 1 here.
(I’m seeking a few more beta readers. Let me know if you’re interested.)
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