Good Deaths and Bad Deaths by Susan Watkins

There are many books and articles about the end of life: books about grieving, books and articles about caretaking a loved one, books about hospice, books about coping with conditions that have no cure. Since I'm not a doctor, I read books and articles written by doctors. But I found only a few books and articles about how we, the elderly, could manage to go from here, alive and healthy, to dying a graceful death at home with our family. I learned that this is not easy: there are many bumps in the road along the way. It takes a lot of planning so that we do not end up in a noisy hospital, hooked up with machinery to provide breath and nutrition in our final—often uncomfortable-days, pleading with a doctor to "do something more"; others will plead "just let me go." I hope that this book will be a guide to planning for a graceful ending.