An Honoring Death: A Primer for Families

This is the story of a family who loved their mama very much. While we could not prevent her leaving us, we provided a most honoring and glorious sendoff.Join me, a novice to death, as I direct and record Mom's three-week drama. Insightful and well established hospice and palliative care explanations are added by my sister, a palliative care nurse and hospice educator, who coached us from across the country. Walk with our family through the gut wrenching natural death process dictated by Mom's health care directive and learn how to apply this to your upcoming situations with love, unity, and faith. Project yourself into our true story and “try on” how your family could survive and thrive in a similar and inevitable crisis.You will gain creative ideas as well as be challenged to step out of the box and confidently weave your family experience into a uniquely honoring death for your loved one.You will also learn how to save a ton of money.

The library of my one room country school, though teensy, boasted glorious tales of a life beyond the reaches of my small central Minnesota farming township. Surely there was a world out there worth exploring. My family lived in financial poverty only; we seven siblings lived larger than our surroundings, even papering the old outhouse with Wordsworth sonnets. You may have read about people like me. I did walk or ride my 20” Schwinn a mile and a half to school each day (weather permitting, and it is not true that hills are higher or the snow deeper on the trip home) and cut paper dolls out of the Sears and Roebuck catalog. I learned that you can ride pigs if you don’t have horses, never raise cucumbers to sell to pickle retailers thinking you will strike it rich, and that it was normal to eat eight meals a day. I also learned there was a God who loved me and died for me and had planned an amazing role for me in His Cosmic Drama. I determined to become His actress and focus my life on an Academy Award performance. I added some fancy schmancy education beyond my one room country school which allowed me the great privilege of serving the marginalized of society in my professional, volunteer and personal lives. It has been my honor to serve at-risk teens, people in poverty, the dying, and mothers of children with disabilities. God blessed me with both successes and failures; heartache, pain and beauty; and miraculous experiences and unbelievable opportunities. One quite amazing opportunity led to my becoming a playwright and lyricist. That should not really surprise you, what with my putting on Christmas plays with sixteen country school cronies half a century ago and taking a year or so of piano lessons from a back woods piano teacher when I was six. (I am self-taught on the flutaphone, kazoo and comb.) Brenden Books are a Haven for Your Heart... With a Side of Whimsy. They are best read with your favorite cuppa coffee, tea or hot chocolate and at least one delectable confection. (This I also learned early on in life on the farm.) You may wish to have a supply of tissues. Tears are the language of the heart and I both write and speak that language fluently. Laughing and chortling are also great for your heart so prepared for full belly laughs as well. And did I mention I wear hats?