This book is a must read for all.

It's hopeful.
It's heartbreaking.
It's beautiful.
And it's jam-packed with lessons that hit me harder than I was expecting them to.

I would VERY HIGHLY recommend this book.


Favorite passages:
He seemed remarkably calm that his mother was a Grim Reaper in clogs and pants that were always too snug in the waist, holding the power over life and death in the same hands that held his applesauce.

Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us.

We don't live our lives in our heads, in theology and theories. We live our lives in our families: the families we are born into, the families we create, the families we make through the people we choose as friends.

Where there's breath, there's hope.

Hope is a shape-shifter that can appear and grow in even the tiniest of cracks…

Things are never as they appear. My hospice patients have taught me that. There are always layers to people’s lives, unseen memories under every face, every decision, every movement or lack of movement. There is always gray between the black and white.

Who do you believe yourself to be? It’s a strange question, right? But trying to answer it honestly tells a person so much about themselves.

No one can go back in time to change what happened, unless you're Marty McFly or Doctor Who, and it didn’t always go so well for them, either. You cannot change your past, and you cannot change yourself in the past.

Dying isn’t going to change who you fundamentally are, either. If you were a hilarious, fun-loving, sex-in-a-meadow kind of person at thirty-five, you’ll probably still be that way at eighty-five, even if you can’t get your own pants off anymore. You might be even funnier, because you’re no longer worrying as much what other people think.
If you were a selfish jerk in life, there’s a good chance you’ll still be a selfish jerk when you’re dying. Dying doesn’t automatically make you a better person. If you haven’t asked for forgiveness or done any work to rebuild damaged relationships, reconciliation isn’t going to magically come to you just because you’re at death's door.

If you want to apologize, then apologize now. If you want to tell someone you’re proud of them, say it right now. If you want to express your love, call up and say, “I love you.” If you want to ask for forgiveness, do it this second, while there is still time to do the actual work that’s in solved in seeking and granting forgiveness and arriving at some reconciliation. Don’t hold back.