Advice for Future Corpses

What the Living Can Learn by Looking Death Straight in the Eye

You get ready to die the way you get ready for a trip. Start by realizing you don't know the way. Study the language, look at maps, pack your bags. Let yourself imagine what it will be like. Think of this book as a travel guide: a guide to preparing for your own death and the deaths of people close to you.

The fact of death is hard to believe. Sallie Tisdale explores our fears and all the ways death and talking about death make us uncomfortable-and she also explores its intimacies and joys. Tisdale looks at grief, what the last days and hours of life are like, and what happens to dead bodies. Advice for Future Corpses includes stories, exercises, practical advice, personal experience, and a little Buddhist philosophy.