If you picked up this book because you’re the caregiver for an elderly parent, I thank you profoundly. Chances are you were born sometime between 1946 and 1964, making you a member of the baby boom generation (there are about 75 million of us in America, representing about 29% of the U.S. population). If you were one of the first births following World War II, you turned 60 in 2006, and if you’re lucky, you might even be retired now.
We have a tendency to forget, perhaps purposefully, that we are all going to die someday. How we choose to live today directly affects the nature of that end zone. I have learned that we don’t die any differently than we live. The two are as dependent on each other as how carefully and lovingly we tend our vegetable gardens or our automobiles.
There is an underlying gift here to show us that we are all teachers to someone in life. The moment you connect with a sad, lonely and frightened elder, you give them your time, your attention and your gentle touch. In this way you can open up a channel for them to contribute to your life in a way you never imagined possible. The days and final moments leading to our deaths can be the most important time we spend on earth, preparing us for whatever lies beyond our five senses. To participate in that time more fully, more passionately, knowing we have been loved, even by a relative stranger, can make for a lovely transition into a glorious tangerine sunset. And, when it’s time to make our own final crossings, we’ll be better prepared ourselves.
Excerpt
Whether we like it or not, most of us are going to be old before we die. Watching our grandparents and parents grow old and lose their independence along with their eyesight, continence, cognition or hearing is a foreshadowing of what will very likely be happening to us in a decade or two. How we boomers treat our beloved elders may someday come back and either haunt us or be pleasurably reminiscent, not as a karmic threat, but as an opportunity to choose love over fear, kindness over impatience, compassion over neglect.
Professional Reviews
Louise Hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life
This book is a loving tribute to Bee Landis, showing her spunk, humor and wisdom. Bee was a blessing to everyone who met her. We all remember her with love
Lois A. Vitt, Ph.D., Financial Gerontologist and Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Retirement and Finance
A tour de force for our time, Exit Strategy: Leaving this Life with Grace and Gratitude, is equally compelling as an antidote to American cultural misgivings about aging and death as it is a model for every caregiver of the elderly and dying. With deft writing, Kelsey Collins captures the psychological and spiritual processes that lead to a “good” death. Her experiences also open avenues for reflection and discussion about how to plan for dying and death. The extraordinary examples set by Collins and her elderly adoptee, Bee, will linger long after the book is closed.
Terrance W. Dushenko, Ph.D.
In the west especially, we have long tended to view death and dying as subjects to avoid, as if ignoring them would make them go away. The challenge is even worse with our elders. Not since the Levine’s brilliantly asked us to examine what we'd do differently if we knew we had only a year left to live has anyone so courageously tackled the subjects of death, dying and the how-to’s of living to and through the transition.
An alcoholic, miserly attorney reluctantly defends a black man from a false resisting arrest charge. He then discovers damaging information against the cops and two cronies, and embarks on a battle to keep himself and his client alive.
Kim Jong Eun è morto. L'esercito nordcoreano è ora al comando. Il loro nuovo dittatore militare, il maresciallo Ko, crede che con un'invasione totale possano raggiungere Seul, a sole 35 miglia di distanza.
