Every one of us, without exception, is going to die. Yet most of us are fearful, in denial, or determined to beat the odds. Perhaps there is another way to confront our inevitable destiny. Could we not regard death as one stage of a natural life-death-life cycle in which what we call "death" is but one aspect of a larger "life"?Here are the stories of four people -- two men and two women -- whom the author accompanied as a healer as they prepared for their passages. It is about their experience, and about her experience as she watched them decline physically and emerge spiritually. It is about the caregiver's role and the reactions of family and friends; it is about resistance and accepting and coping. It is about the mortality that all of us must face -- about preparing for death physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. And at its deepest level, it is about learning how to love.
