From Publishers Weekly
As a hospice nurse and the former president of the Hospice Foundation for Caring, Harris has seen more than her share of death. In this collection of 44 real-life stories, she shares her own journeys with patients in their final days with an eye not only to what the dying experience, but what those last days, weeks and months may teach those of us who walk with them. Regardless of our lifelong faith, or lack thereof, Harris believes, most dying people come to experience God's unconditional love and his desire to welcome us home, a point illustrated by the book's stories. Many of the shorter two- or three-page stories lack enough detail or new information to be thought provoking or spiritually nurturing, but Harris's longer anecdotes, like those about her grandparents, are deeply touching and encouraging. Those attending a dying person will find examples of ways they may listen to and be helpful to them. Those who wonder about what their own journey toward death may be like will find in these stories a demystification of the last days of life on earth and future glimpses of heaven that offer comfort and hope.
(Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From the Inside Flap
EXCERPT FROM CATALOG
"Who is the man standing by the lake?" Grandfather asked, pointing out of the window. "That's the weeping willow tree," I said to him. "I see the tree," he answered with a smile. "I mean the man who is standing underneath the tree, by the water? Who is he?" I looked but saw no one standing near the tree. That night while putting my youngest son, Ken, to bed, I told him what Grandfather had said. "Do you think he saw Jesus?" he asked. "I don't know," I replied. Later in the evening as we were preparing Grandfather for bed I relayed my conversation to Grandfather. "Ken wants to know if you saw Jesus under the tree tonight." "Yes, dear. Why?" he replied. He answered in that same sure, confident and matter-of-fact way that I have come to recognize and accept in people who are about to die. They seem to have spiritual eyes and ears, understanding things that we do not and having no fear of sharing them with us. Grandfather died that night, sitting in the recliner, overlooking the lake where he had seen Jesus, with family members taking turns by his side. When he took his last breath, and we realized it was his last, his wife, son, daughter, and I all found it comforting for some reason to pile into the king size bed next to his chair and fall asleep. It was three in the morning. I mention the time of his death only because when we called his nurse, Dottie, at seven in the morning, she said, "George died at three this morning, didn't he?" When we asked how she knew, she relayed her experience of waking up at three a.m. and hearing a voice say, "I've come for my servant George." In the early days I only smiled at such things, not really believing them. It took me thirty years of caring for dying people to know that those happenings are as real as anything you will ever experience in life.
