With the End in Mind: Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial by Kathryn Mannix

BATB score: 9/10

Best as: a diary of a doctor in palliative care guiding the dying through their last moments

Best to: you know how we can only die once, and so we really can’t predict nor prepare how it would be (even those peaceful deaths), worst yet, those who have experienced full death can not come back #resurrection and share their learnings; and so there’s lot of anxiety on the leading days to death as a dying novice

BATB linger thought: most common question is will it hurt; answer is, you will feel very tired day after day, you will be sleeping a lot more, then sleeping becomes moments of unconsciousness that you didn’t realize you left the meeting, and then you just drift away and dies, no pain.

Best for: most common deathbed conversations: I am sorry, I forgive you, thank you, and I love you`

Best quotes: “There are only two days with fewer than twenty-four hours in each lifetime, sitting like bookends astride our lives: one is celebrated every year, yet it is the other that makes us see living as precious.”

“It’s your life that you are working on finishing well.”