How could I pass up a book with a title like that? I found it really contains a serious account of what happens to a human body from the time of death until burial—information that is difficult to get from undertakers. Once you read the straightforward description of the embalming process, you will wonder why people would want such a thing done to their own corpse or the body of anyone they loved and respected.
5. Necessary Losses, by Judith Viorst, published in paperback in 1987 by Fawcett/Ballantine.
The subtitle was enough to turn me off: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow. But someone kept insisting I read this book, and I found it was not another self-help manual, but an honest description of the inevitable letting go of many sorts that makes going on with life and into death possible. Again, this is a book I often give as a present to someone trying to stay afloat and swim in deep waters.
6. The High Cost of Dying by Gregory W. Young, published in paperback in 1994 by Prometheus Books.
This slim volume is an excellent guide to funeral planning—the one you will wish you had read before you had to plan a funeral, rather than afterward. If it had been available years ago, I would have routinely given it to any family who asked my professional help in preparing for a funeral.
7. The Art of Condolence, by Leonard M. Zunin and Hilary Stanton Zunin, published in paperback in 1991 by Harper Perennial, a division of HarperCollins.
“What to write, what to say, what to do at a time of loss.” I wish I had written this book. I do take its excellent advice and suggestions to heart. Not only does it cover a difficult and sensitive subject thoughtfully, but it is well written. Exceptionally useful appendix.
The following pages are forms I used when putting my affairs in order through the People’s Memorial Society.
The People’s Memorial Society has chapters in many towns and cities across the United States and Canada. For information on the memorial society nearest you, please call or write:
FUNERAL AND MEMORIAL SOCIETIES OF
AMERICA, INC.
6900 LOST LAKE ROAD
EGG HARBOR, WISCONSIN 54209
FAX/TEL: 414-868-3168
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROBERT FULGHUM’S books—All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It, Uh-Oh, Maybe (Maybe Not), and From Beginning to End—have sold more than fourteen million copies in twenty-seven languages in ninety-three countries. He has four children and lives with his wife, a family physician, on a houseboat in Seattle, Washington.
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