Companions for the Passage: Stories of the Intimate Privilege of Accompanying the Dying

Ryerson, Marjorie,Moore, Thomas

ISBN 10: 0472030787 / ISBN 13: 9780472030781

Published by University of Michigan Press, 2005

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Companions for the Passage: Stories of the Intimate Privilege of Accompanying the Dying
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472030787
• ISBN 13: 9780472030781
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Companions for the Passage, from the author of the acclaimed Water Music, is an unforgettable book on a rarely visited subject: the personal stories of those who have witnessed the death of a loved one. Similar to works of Studs Terkel, author Marjorie Ryerson's interviews capture the human condition through their wide variety of experiences and voices.

Some of the interviewees are religious, some not; some encouraged their loved ones to accept death, others to fight it to the end. There are stories of heroic nurses and of indifferent hospital bureaucracies, of deaths that came too soon, and those that came at the end of a long, rich life. Possessing an affirmative quality that is anything but sentimental, ultimately these stories celebrate the experience of being present at the death of a loved one.

About the Author

Marjorie Ryerson teaches Communications at Castleton State College, as well as poetry at the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. Her previous book, Water Music (University of Michigan Press, 2003), collected the writings of sixty-six world class musicians.

Writer and philosopher Thomas Moore is the author of Care of the Soul and Soul Mates.