The Beauty of Dying: A Volume on Sacred Death

A tender, unflinching volume for anyone who has met death, or fears it. On grief, dying, and learning to live with open hands.

We were not made to meet death the way we meet it now. Under hospital lights, behind glass, handed to us as bad news by a stranger. Somewhere along the way we forgot that death was ever ours to hold.

This is a volume about remembering.

The Beauty of Dying is a volume on sacred death, written for anyone who has lost someone, anyone sitting with someone who is dying, and anyone who has felt the quiet fear of their own ending and had nowhere to take it. It does not look away from grief, and it does not rush you through it. It sits with you in it, and slowly, page by page, it shows you that the thing we were taught to dread has another face entirely.

Inside, you will find:

A long, honest passage on what death actually is, gathered from the voices who have spoken about it most beautifully, and from those who have died and come back.

A chapter on grief that does not try to fix you, and a practice, explained simply, for the nights when the wave feels like it will take you under. How to feel the pain without being destroyed by the story wrapped around it.

The return of the home funeral, the old rituals, and why we needed them.

How to be with the dying, at the threshold, without fear.

A chapter for those surviving a loss to suicide, with help placed first, before anything else.

How to raise children who are not afraid of death.

And throughout, a thread that runs to the last page. That you birth how you live, and you die how you live. That the way you meet the small deaths is the way you will meet the great one. That you were never holding it all together, and you are allowed to let your hands fall open.

This is not a clinical volume and it is not a religious one. It is something to return to slowly, or to press upon a friend in the worst week of their life, or to read to prepare yourself for what comes to all of us.

Over two hundred pages. Written with great love.

This is for you if:

You have lost someone, and found no language anywhere that fit.

You are afraid of your own death, and tired of carrying it alone.

You are caring for someone at the end of their life, and want to meet it with presence instead of dread.

You want to raise children who can speak about death without fear.

You feel, somewhere underneath, that there is a more beautiful way to hold all of this than the one you were handed.