Informed by her many years working as a nurse, with more than a decade in palliative care, Tisdale provides a frank, direct, and compassionate meditation on the inevitable. 

Tisdale leads us through the peaks and troughs of death with a calm, wise, and humorous hand. She explores all the heartbreaking, beautiful, terrifying, confusing, absurd, and even joyful experiences that accompany the work of dying, including:

A Good Death: What does it mean to die “a good death”? Can there be more than one kind of good death? What can I do to make my death, or the deaths of my loved ones, good?

Communication: What to say and not to say, what to ask, and when, from the dying, loved ones, doctors, and more.

Last Months, Weeks, Days, and Hours: What you might expect, physically and emotionally, including the limitations, freedoms, pain, and joy of this unique time.

Bodies: What happens to a body after death? What options are available to me after my death, and how do I choose—and make sure my wishes are followed?

Grief: “Grief is the story that must be told over and over…Grief is the breath after the last one.”