My Name As A Prayer: A daughter and mother find peace just in time

By Sheridan Hill

An intimate memoir of the author's journey when her mother, an actress and Southern charm school owner, moves into a retirement condo. The book offers hilarious moments as Hill brings readers into a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0979135508
• ISBN13: 9780979135507
• Release Date: September 2013
• Publisher: Real Life Stories
• Length: 124 Pages
• Weight: 0.39 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.3" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Absolutely sublime

This is the most moving memoir I have ever read. The intimacy Sheridan Hill shares with her readers and close attention to details is breath taking. I could not put it down. Astonishing and simply beautiful. This is a must read for the hospice community and the families they serve.

A MUST READ for anyone with an elderly parent or friend

I'm one of the "baby boom" generation, we who once shouted "never trust anyone over twenty-five!" And now we are in our forties, fifties, and sixties, often facing alone the crisis of the death of a parent or loved one. Our culture has ill prepared us for this passage, a society that dwells on youth and so carefully hides away death. I lost both of my parents several years back and only wish I had first read Ms. Hill's book, it would have served as a guide, and reaffirmed as well the rightness of decisions I made for the sake of my mother and father. It is not a book about death, it is a book about living and sharing to the fullest one's final journey with a parent. I will freely admit I wept repeatedly as I read Ms. Hill's beautifully crafted tome which honors and celebrates her mother's final months. Reading it made me realize that so much of what I experienced was valid, that I was not alone in my feelings and gave me new and hopeful insights into my own life and the spiritual journey of my mother and father. If you just read these reviews and do not buy the book, please heed her advice from this reviewer. Listen to your parents now, talk with them, share and recall all the moments, good and bad, and fight with all your passion to insure their time of passage is a time that is respectful of their dignity. Though I do hope you purchase this work even though the subject might be the last one on your mind at this moment. For someday it will occupy your life front and center and Ms. Hill is a guide you can turn to and trust.

Listening to the silence from the other side

My Name As A Prayer is a book you will want to read more than once, as I intend to do. But first I have to get copies to my sister and my sister-in-law, for I think this book will speak especially to mothers and daughters. However, as a former hospice volunteer and as someone who was present during the months my parents were dying and being cared for by hospice, I find that Sheridan Hill's book also has much to teach even those of us--male or female--who have already seen our parents or other loved ones pass on. I remember once when I was alone with a dying woman--or so I thought--and listening to her have a long conversation with unseen others in the room...and the peace it brought her. I could only hear her side of the conversation; there was only silence when she wasn't speaking, but it was surely "holy silence" wherein she could hear what she needed to hear, even though I couldn't. Sheridan Hill's thoughts on "holy silence" and the need to allow the dying to be present (i.e., not overly medicated) at their own deaths are insightful, I think, and worth the price of the book alone. Of course, simply being present, via the book, with Ms. Hill to hear her beautiful story is worth the price of the book, too.

Death - A Part of Life

This is a wonderful story about a daughter helping her mother prepare for death. In the process she grasps the awesome reality that death is part of life's journey. I was most taken by the intimate details as this year long story unfolds. Ms Hill is a master at putting the reader inside her head as we follow along. I could see and smell the hospice room as she stands beside her mother's bed slowly feeding her crushed ice and listening to her conversations with God. Her stress is palpable as she begs the hospice staff not to over medicate her mother so that she is at best semi-conscious. "She needs to talk, not to be rendered unconscious." But the staff's job is to keep her "comfortable", which also keeps the patient from being so much work. Many if not most of us will follow in Sheridan's footsteps as our own parents age and die, or as time comes. This is a must-read!

Deeply affecting memoir of a mother's passing

This memoir's clear, heartfelt writing touched me deeply. The author nearly had me crying several times as she traced the steady arc of her mother's gradual, challenging, and ultimately beautiful process of transitioning from body to Spirit. Hill also does an outstanding job of "showing, not telling," which put me right into the heart of her mother's transition and Hill's own varying responses to the process. I could detect no padding or fat; one of the book's great strengths is its Hemingwayesque economy of language. This also makes it a fairly quick read, which only serves to concentrate its emotional impact. "My Name as a Prayer" is courageous, important and timely. It has the power to touch many hearts, enlighten many minds, and heal many souls. Hill is a truly gifted writer, and I loved this book!