Advice for Future Corpses (And Those Who Love Them): A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying

Former NEA fellow and Pushcart Prize-winning writer Sallie Tisdale explores all the heartbreaking, beautiful, terrifying, confusing, absurd, and even joyful experiences that accompany the work of dying.

Advice for Future Corpses (And Those Who Love Them) is a practical perspective on death and dying. Informed by her many years working as a nurse, with more than a decade in palliative care, Tisdale provides a frank and compassionate meditation on the inevitable.

From the sublime (the faint sound of Mozart as you take your last breath) to the ridiculous (lessons on how to close the sagging jaw of a corpse), Tisdale leads readers through the peaks and troughs of death with a wise and humorous hand. This is more than a how-to manual or a spiritual bible: it is a graceful compilation of honest and intimate anecdotes based on the deaths Tisdale has witnessed in her work and life, as well as stories from cultures, traditions, and literature around the world.