Happy Endings: Uplifting End of Life Stories

by Lorna Bell

Book Overview

Happy Endings is a collection of forty stories about people who said good-bye in unique and uplifting ways. This is not to say their narratives-generously shared with the author by families and caregivers-are without pain and sorrow. Yet, the final stage of life holds remarkable possibilities to strengthen bonds between loved ones and confirm our faith in the hereafter. An elderly woman prepares a magnificent deathbed of rose petals from bouquets...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1497635993
• ISBN13: 9781497635999
• Release Date: August 2014
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
• Length: 260 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Successful Landings

Death is such an emotionally freighted topic for us, we seem only to be able to view it askance, as it were, out of the corners of our mental vision,as a passage, a journey into the unknown, or the culmination of our life's journey. We recognise that as such, much as the our routes through life have differed, death is our common destination. Yet we all too often view it in excclusively negative terms. Granted, premature death is universally experienced as a tragedy, and where our loved ones are concerned, part of us is always apt to find their deaths premature,if only because we wish to have more of them. Still, there comes a time when death, objectively viewed, is not only inevitable, but appropriate. When the organs begin failing, when the body cannot sustain its life, an exit is undeniably fitting. Why, then,do we invaribly characterize death as a failure? "Lost his courageous battle","succumbed" we are likely to say, rather than the more genteel "passed." A peaceful death, when described, is usually appended with "in his sleep," implying that it was peacful for the dying person simply because he was not conscious for it. If life is seen as a long journey by airplane, death is depicted as a crash landing, best experienced in one's sleep. Flight instructors are fond of reassuring student pilots nervous before their first landings, that there has never been a failure to land. The stories in Lorna Bell's "Happy Endings" books provide us with examples of peaceful, successful landings, deaths that provide meaningful conclusions, graceful arrivals at the end of life's journeys. Our fear for our loved ones, is that they might experience terror at their deaths, as we ourselves dread their passing, and our own. One of the poems my father could recite from memory was William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis," at the conclusion of which the author enjoins the reader to live his life so that when death should come he will welcome it as one weary from labor welcomes a well-earned sleep. The common thread that runs through "Happy Endings" is the equanimity with which each person approaches death. That said, this is a book of comfort for the living, comfort provided by the available examples each story depicts. It is a book of hope and joy. Like all pilots before us, we know one thing for sure: we will not fail to land. After reading (and rereading) "Happy Endings" we are inspired and assured that we too can land gracefully.

Outstanding!

Lorna Bell has produced an outstanding compilation of uplifting end of life stories from her first and second books. I have read and re-read the other books and now to have them all in one book is such a pleasure. If you have read either or both of her previous Happy Endings book, or you have not, you will want to own this collection! From my perspective, you will not be disappointed!