Help
Plain help for people who are dying, caring, grieving, or living through a time when life has come apart.
Death, caring, grief, and other passages
Start wherever you are.
- I am dyingA letter to you. Nothing is asked of you.
- I am afraid of deathWhat the fear is made of, and a way to look at it tonight.
- Someone I love is dyingHow to be in the room, and what to say.
- Someone has diedThe first weeks, and what you can still do for them.
- My life is coming apartIllness, endings, despair, the nights you cannot stop thinking.
- Something to do right nowA few minutes with the breath, in a chair or a bed.
If you are dying
For someone who has been told, or who feels it coming.
Read one page and put it down. Nothing is asked of you.
- A Letter to Someone Who Is DyingYou are not doing this wrong. You do not have to believe anything. And what is coming is not a stranger.
- What the Fear Is Made OfFear is a feeling, not information about what death is. A way to look at it directly, tonight.
- What Does Not DieSomething in you was never born and cannot die. Not a belief. A thing to look at, now, in one quiet minute.
- How Dying GoesWhat happens as the body settles and the breath stops, why it dawns for everyone, and why you cannot miss it by being tired, drugged, or afraid.
- Hope and Fear, Held LooselyHoping to live and preparing to die are not opposites. How to stop the swing, and what to say to doctors and family.
- Setting Things DownRegret, apologies, forgiveness, possessions, roles. What can still be done, and what to do with what cannot.
- A Few Words to Keep NearReminders to keep by the bed, to say to yourself, or to have someone read to you. With a note for the person reading.
If someone you love is dying
For the people in the chair beside the bed.
Most of what is asked of you is simpler than you fear. It is to be there.
- How to Be in the Room, and What to SayYou do not have to do anything at a bedside. Being there without your fear running loose, the sentences that isolate, and the five that help.
- When the Person You Love Is Afraid, Angry, or ConfusedHow to stay in the room when a dying person's mind is not calm, without correcting them or taking it personally.
- The Last HoursWhat often happens as a person dies, how to keep the room calm, what to do when the breath stops, and the first hours after.
- Caring for Yourself While You CareExhaustion, resentment, guilt about the resentment, and why the body's limits are not failures.
- Talking with Children about DeathHow to tell children the truth in simple words, let them be near, and answer where someone has gone.
- Hard Decisions at the EndHospice, treatment, machines, and 'everything possible': how to decide from love rather than guilt, and what a peaceful death is worth.
After someone has died
For the first weeks, and for years later.
Grief has no schedule, and there are still things you can do for the one who died.
- The First WeeksWhat to do, and not do, in the days right after a death, when nothing feels real and everyone wants a signature.
- Carrying ThemThere is no timeline and no getting over it. You learn to carry the one you loved, and joy is not a betrayal.
- Where Did They GoWhat happens to a person after death, according to the old masters: not lost, not judged, and not far away.
- What You Can Still Do for ThemHow to speak to someone who has died, how to give them a kindness, and how to use the forty-nine days.
- Guilt, and the Things You Did Not DoHow to walk out of the courtroom that opens in the mind after a death.
- After a SuicideFor the people left behind: the question with no answer, the blame that belongs to no one, and what you can still do.
- When Death Comes SuddenlyFor the accident, the heart attack, the phone call at dawn: the last conversation, the fear that they died afraid, and what can still be done.
Other passages
Illness, loneliness, lost faith, the nights you cannot stop thinking.
An ending and a gap, and the gap is not your enemy.
- When Your Life Falls ApartWhat to do, and not do, in the weeks when everything has gone at once and there is nothing left to stand on.
- Illness as a PassageLiving with a body that will not be argued with, and noticing that the one who is aware of the pain is not in pain.
- When You Cannot Stop ThinkingA way through the hour at three in the morning when the mind will not let go.
- LonelinessThe difference between being alone and being abandoned, and the company that does not leave the empty room.
- When You Want It All to StopFor someone who is thinking about ending their life. Read this, and then please call someone.
- Losing Your FaithFor the person whose religion or sense of meaning has gone, and what is left when belief is gone.
Short practices
Things to do with a few minutes, in a chair or in a bed.
Each takes a few minutes and needs no belief and no equipment.
- Resting at the End of the Out-BreathA short practice you can do in bed or in a chair, built on the small pause that already happens every time you breathe out.
- Going to Sleep as a RehearsalLet falling asleep teach you what letting go feels like, gently and without any anxiety about it.
- Remembering the GuestA one-minute morning remembrance of death, which is not morbid at all. It is what makes an ordinary day precious.
- Giving It AwayEnd any practice, any hard hour, or any kindness by giving whatever good it held to someone who needs it, including someone who has died.