READING IN DECEMBER: Intimate Death;

INTIMATE DEATH: HOW THE DYING TEACH US TO LIVE by Marie de Hennezel.

This book is also known as 'Seize the Day' depending on the publisher.

 I work closely with terminally ill patients, helping them compile biographies of their lives to leave their families. And yet this process is as much about the patient as it is about the legacy being left. Is there anything more cathartic and indulgent than telling a complete stranger stories about your life, and then seeing it in writing and adorned with photos? For the patient it gives dignity and honour at a difficult time. For me, and I imagine other biographers, it is perhaps one of the most humbling and humane things that can be done for another person. And brings home to me, so much younger than most of the patients I deal with, the title of this book - how the dying teach us to live. Death is a subject that in our Western civilisation bubble, we choose not to think about until we are suddenly confronted with it. In the flood of emotions that corkscrew through us, we find death is something we are really quite ill equipped to deal with. This beautifully written, and at times achingly sad book lifts the lid on, quite simply, what it is like to die. The author is a psychologist/psychotherapist who specialises in caring for palliative care patients. She works mainly in hospice settings in France. This book has been translated from French. This woman has compassion in buckets, and it seems to me walks a very fine line between her professional role in caring for the patient, and her instincts as a human being to nurture and love those she is caring for. She takes a number of patients of various ages suffering from various illnesses - cancer, aids, motor neurone - and shows us that one's last journey need not be as sad, awful, and heartbreaking as we think it is. By giving these patients dignity, talking to them, letting them talk, not wallowing in sadness when with them, the whole business takes on new and uplifting meaning. The most important things I got out of this book? The importance of a smile, the importance of the touch of hand on hand, and what it really means to be human.