February 04, 2016 
Jessica 
Although Atul Gawande’s BEING MORTAL is my assigned DGLM office book-club book, I don’t think I can last until our next meeting without singing its praises in some public forum.
When I began in publishing, there was a certain truism that books on death don’t sell. When I was an editor, I looked at worthy proposals that were, according to conventional wisdom and my ed-board, simply too hard. Certainly there had been exceptions—books by Elizabeth Kubler Ross, Jessica Mitford, Sherwin Nuland—but they just proved the rule. For the most part, the book industry reflected our entirely human propensity to avoid thinking about our own inevitable ends.
That Gawande’s BEING MORTAL—a work of such signal intelligence, readability and compassion–has sold so extravagantly, hitting #1 on the NYT bestseller list, is a sign that perhaps we’ve turned a corner. When my fellow DGLM-er Eric found out that I was reading BEING MORTAL, he told me it should be required reading for everyone. And he’s right. Funny, too, because all sorts of books are billed as universally relevant. But Being Mortal really, truly is.
In addition to weeping on commuter trains over my recreational reads (belated apologies to the dismayed lady sitting beside me), I also represent authors whose works engage mortality. Medical Humanities historian Brandy Schillace’s book, Death’s Summer Coat: What Death and Dying Can Teach us About Life and Living, which was reviewed today in the New Yorker.Com, is a wide-ranging and fascinating look across cultural approaches to death, while forensic pathologist Judy Melinek, co-author of the memoir Working Stiff, chronicled her work as a speaker for the dead. Another client, archaeologist Nicholas Reeves is at work on an excavation that aims to find a particularly ancient and famous corpse, Nefertiti (the ancient Egyptian approach to death, or the royal one, anyway, being that you can take it with you.) And I’m reading a proposal from author and neurosurgeon Richard Rapport on How We Don’t Die.
In any event, none of this has yet helped me with the particular challenges of explaining the certainty of death to my children. My younger son recently requested a pet hamster, one who (in contrast to his cousin’s late and much-mourned Hamchop) would not die. When I patiently explained that all living things die eventually, even people, he looked at me for a beat and retorted, “Yes, Mom. I know. All except my hamster.”
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I love this and am smiling thinking of how I kept warning our nine year old twins that they needed to give our Pug extra love because she was going to die soon. Finally…six months later…they asked,” so when is Frankie going to die anyway??” Oh boy!
After 27 years of nursing I have left to speak and written a book entitled, “Love Your Life to Death”. I interviewed people from age 11 to 102. From their wisdom and my experience on “the inside”, I’ve addressed many of the dilemmas our death-phobic society face.
Worth a read, if I do say so myself!
Now, that does sound like worthwhile reading!
1. I will guess that the heightened willingness to read about death is due to the Baby Boomer generation dealing with the final stages of their parents’ lives, and their own rapidly approaching old age.
2. I will state, without any guesswork whatsoever, that a child who demands a pet that will not die is by no means ready for a pet of any kind. You might explain that, “Until you are old enough to love someone even though you know you won’t have him anymore someday, you are not ready. If you cannot do that, you only want him for yourself, and you don’t really care about him. That’s being selfish.”