Death and Dying

Companions for the Passage by Marjorie Ryerson

Companions for the Passage: Stories of the Intimate Privilege of Accompanying the Dying

Marjorie Ryerson

Rights: World*
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu

"Companions for the Passage provides a unique look at the ways people adapt to loss. These are powerful stories for anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one."
—J. Donald Schumacher, President and CEO National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization

From the author of Water Music, Companions for the Passage is an unforgettable book on a rarely visited subject: the personal accounts of those who have witnessed the death of a loved one. Similar to works of Studs Terkel, author Marjorie Ryerson's interviews capture the human condition through their wide variety of experiences and voices.

Some of the interviewees are religious, some not; some encouraged their loved ones to accept death, others to fight it to the end. There are stories of heroic nurses and of indifferent hospital bureaucracies, of deaths that came too soon, and those that came at the end of a long, rich life. Possessing an affirmative quality that is anything but sentimental, ultimately these stories celebrate the experience of being present at the death of a loved one.

Marjorie Ryerson teaches Communications at Castleton State College, as well as poetry at the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. Her previous book, Water Music (University of Michigan Press, 2003), collected the writings of sixty-six world class musicians.

Thomas Moore is a psychotherapist, lecturer, writer, and author of Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life.

May 2005
192 pages

*Australian rights are not available.
*New Zealand rights are not available.
*Indian subcontinent rights are not available.