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

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.

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.