On Living

by Kerry Egan

As a hospice chaplain, Kerry Egan didn’t offer sermons or prayers, unless they were requested; in fact, she found, the dying rarely want to talk about God, at least not overtly. Instead, she discovered she’d been granted an invaluable chance to witness firsthand what she calls the “spiritual work of dying”—the work of finding or making meaning of one’s life, the experiences it’s contained and the people who have touched it, the betrayals, wounds, unfinished business, and unrealized dreams. Instead of talking, she mainly listened: to stories of hope and regret, shame and pride, mystery and revelation and secrets held too long. Most of all, though, she listened as her patients talked about love—love for their children and partners and friends; love they didn’t know how to offer; love they gave unconditionally; love they, sometimes belatedly, learned to grant themselves.

This isn’t a book about dying—it’s a book about living. And Egan isn’t just passively bearing witness to these stories. An emergency procedure during the birth of her first child left her physically whole but emotionally and spiritually adrift. Her work as a hospice chaplain healed her, from a brokenness she came to see we all share. Each of her patients taught her something—how to find courage in the face of fear or the strength to make amends; how to be profoundly compassionate and fiercely empathetic; how to see the world in grays instead of black and white. In this poignant, moving, and beautiful book, she passes along all their precious and necessary gifts.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Spirituality, Self Help, Death, Philosophy, Audiobook

5 pages, Audiobook

First published October 25, 2016

Reviews

[Darlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful little book! Part memoir, part inspirational, and part self-help, 'On Living' by Kerry Egan was one of the most uplifting books I've read this year. I suppose it may seem strange to describe a book written by a hospice chaplain as uplifting but ultimately, that's exactly what it was.

Kerry Egan began the book by describing a rough time in her life which ended up leading her to becoming a hospice chaplain. Years earlier when giving birth to her son, she was administered a drug during a caesarian which ended up inducing in her a period of psychosis. She wrote honestly and with what seemed deep regret about the months she lost with her young son because of her inability to function as his mother. Through her personal struggles, she came to realize that ALL people experience some difficulty in their lives which they regard as significant and which might result in their questioning the very meaning of their lives. This realization and her desire to demonstrate her understanding and compassion toward struggling people led her to enter the Harvard Divinity School and consequently she began her work as a chaplain for hospice services.

I don't know about you but when I think about the word chaplain, I am reminded of the rigid dogma attached to religious beliefs. I think of priests administering last rites to dying people. I was surprised to learn that Kerry Egan, in her role as hospice chaplain, spent the majority of her time sitting at the bedsides of dying people and simply listening…. not praying and not reading from the Bible or other religious text… but LISTENING to whatever her patients had on their minds. Most often, patients wanted to talk to her about their families and people they loved. God and religion were rarely topics patients were consumed by in their final days. As Ms. Egan learned, the often abstract thoughts of religious beliefs are really not how many people EXPERIENCE their lives. Instead, people's lives are experienced through the memories they create with their families and friends.. I thought a great deal about this idea and it really rang true for me. I'm NOT a religious person but in looking at my life, it is also made up of all the moments with my OWN family. I think of happy moments… the births of my children and the quiet I experienced with each of them at those 3 AM feedings, sharing cherry popsicles with my kids on hot summer afternoons, lying on our backs in the backyard and staring up at the night sky so I could teach them the names of the constellations, reading bedtime stories….. and even the moments that weren't so great like losing a job or receiving a difficult diagnosis. These are moments that although can't be associated with any religious beliefs, to me, have always gone hand-in-hand with a feeling of calm.. a stillness or sense of peace... which I suppose is what I associate with MY sense of what God must BE or what God MEANS.

My favorite part of this little book was the stories that Ms. Egan shared of lessons learned from her patients.. funny stories, anguished stories, sad stories. Her patients had many stories and much advice to share. I was particularly touched by the longing expressed by one of her patients to be touched by the people she loved. She was starved for the touch of their hands and their embrace.. not simply the care which was taken of her physical needs but that human touch we all need from people who love us. She wanted someone to touch her because she was loved by them. Ms. Egan also related a wonderful story in which the husband of a dying woman reminded her to stop looking at the world so much in terms of just black and white. He told her that life was best lived by remembering to see all the shades of gray. After all, those shades of gray keep us from becoming too judgmental . We never REALLY know someone's situation unless we put ourselves in their place.. shades of gray.. not black, not white; not right, not wrong.

Although this book was written by a hospice chaplain who spends her days with dying people, it is really a book about life and living. As Kerry Egan reminds us… "To die is a verb. The dying are not a special sort of people; they are just doing something you haven't done yet."

A REALLY uplifting book!

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audiobook….read on Kerry Egan
….4 hours and 11 minutes

When people tell their stories over again…
….over and over again…and tell a story about having suffered … they are probably ‘still’ suffering.

Kerry Egan is a hospice chaplain. She has heard a lot of stories.
She says that when people tell stories over and over again it’s because they’re trying to find meaning in them — meaning that they need to discover for themselves.

Kerry Egan, (bless her), is magnificent reading her client’s stories and her own.

This book is sooooo profound …..so deeply penetrating….
AN AMAZING AUDIOBOOK EXPERIENCE!!! It’s the type of listening that can paralyze our brains — hyjack the mundane —
and stop us on our tracks —

love, family, & living > vignettes > [time spent with the dying]. ….stories about regret, shame, secrets, pride, hope, memories, mystery, families, partners, children, best friends,
….and ‘while’ we are listening it’s normal to also be
reflecting about living ‘our own’ best lives.

There are many sad stories in hospice but there are many fresh funny insightful wonderful ones as well.
Kerry captures the essence of caring for the dying ….. (nothing preachy) …. with compassion, respect, authenticity, vulnerability, honesty, humility, and a tremendously understanding heart.

Highly recommend …..
….. variety of stories > some tragic, some funny, some heart wrenching, some just very touching….NONE are boring.

[Susan Kuhn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book several weeks ago when on vacation. It has stayed with me, despite the fact that I hadn't even intended to read it. My friend had left it out on the coffee table, and after I read the first few pages, I was hooked.

With a mother's love, Kerry Egan narrates a variety of moving and deeply personal stories her past clients have shared-- mostly about key life events that the individuals wish didn't happen but shaped them nonetheless-- in an unexpected, nonjudgmental manner that helped me hit the "refresh" button on my own point of view of myself and my relationships. With almost no previous thoughts to the daily tasks of a chaplain, I was surprised by her humility, open-mindedness and love. Egan also shows vulnerability and models self-acceptance through writing about a very difficult time in her life after her son was born. Through sharing these hardships, she shows that we can sometimes find a little freedom from the weight of them.

The two themes or ideas that really resonated with me were to try to be more lovefull -- to myself and others, and, to remember we all live in the gray. If you want to know what that means, you will have to read it!!

[Erica Robyn Metcalf · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a must read for all.

It's hopeful.
It's heartbreaking.
It's beautiful.
And it's jam-packed with lessons that hit me harder than I was expecting them to.

I would VERY HIGHLY recommend this book.


Favorite passages:
He seemed remarkably calm that his mother was a Grim Reaper in clogs and pants that were always too snug in the waist, holding the power over life and death in the same hands that held his applesauce.

Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us.

We don't live our lives in our heads, in theology and theories. We live our lives in our families: the families we are born into, the families we create, the families we make through the people we choose as friends.

Where there's breath, there's hope.

Hope is a shape-shifter that can appear and grow in even the tiniest of cracks…

Things are never as they appear. My hospice patients have taught me that. There are always layers to people’s lives, unseen memories under every face, every decision, every movement or lack of movement. There is always gray between the black and white.

Who do you believe yourself to be? It’s a strange question, right? But trying to answer it honestly tells a person so much about themselves.

No one can go back in time to change what happened, unless you're Marty McFly or Doctor Who, and it didn’t always go so well for them, either. You cannot change your past, and you cannot change yourself in the past.

Dying isn’t going to change who you fundamentally are, either. If you were a hilarious, fun-loving, sex-in-a-meadow kind of person at thirty-five, you’ll probably still be that way at eighty-five, even if you can’t get your own pants off anymore. You might be even funnier, because you’re no longer worrying as much what other people think.
If you were a selfish jerk in life, there’s a good chance you’ll still be a selfish jerk when you’re dying. Dying doesn’t automatically make you a better person. If you haven’t asked for forgiveness or done any work to rebuild damaged relationships, reconciliation isn’t going to magically come to you just because you’re at death's door.

If you want to apologize, then apologize now. If you want to tell someone you’re proud of them, say it right now. If you want to express your love, call up and say, “I love you.” If you want to ask for forgiveness, do it this second, while there is still time to do the actual work that’s in solved in seeking and granting forgiveness and arriving at some reconciliation. Don’t hold back.

[CanadianReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

"It's a beautiful life and then you leave it."

"Promise yourself [ . . . ] that you'll have a great life, no matter what happens."

The dying, writes Kerry Egan, a hospice chaplain, are not different from you or me. They are just doing something before we do. In On Living, Egan shares many stories of these patients. Some of the stories concern burdensome secrets which the dying wish to be finally relieved of. Other stories challenge both the author's and the reader's understanding of what is "real" or "not real". Most point to the idea that life needs to be lived flexibly, "in the gray".

Some of Egan's observations and anecdotes are more powerful than others, but the one I was most affected by concerned a woman in her forties, a mother with leukaemia, who prayed and prayed to get better so she could mother her children again. She only got sicker and sicker, and the pain grew worse and worse. Then "Everything fell away," she said, and she understood, finally, that dying IS the answer: "Dying will take away the pain. It's the only way the pain is going to end, and the only way that my kids won't see me suffer anymore. You see what I mean? The only way the suffering is going to end is me dying. And I can teach my children how to die without fear. That's what they'll learn from me. That's how I'll be their mother." No, the dying may not be different from us, but sometimes there is something they can show us: a kind of grace and acceptance. I have seen this in my own life, and it was a lovely thing to find it so beautifully articulated in this book.

Writer, speaker, and former director of palliative care for a major hospital network in Canada, Stephen Jenkinson would agree with this dying mother. Among the ideas he would add is that dying is part of our contract with life. It is one of the things life asks of us. Some readers may find Jenkinson's book Die Wise and the NFB (of Canada) film about him, Grief Walker, to be meaningful companion pieces to Egan's simple, accessible text.

Throughout her book, Egan unfolds some details about her own dramatic life-changing event, experienced as she was bringing her first child into the world. No, it was not a "near-death" experience, but it sensitized her to suffering and loss and laid the foundation for her to pursue work as a chaplain.

The potential "non-religious" reader (like me) should be assured that while there are religious references in the book from time to time, one need not be Christian or "a believer" per se to appreciate this work. It is also relatively (and mercifully) free of exhortations and cliches a la Chicken Soup for the Soul.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Abigail Thomas wrote this blurb for On Living--

"When I forget the importance of kindness, when I forget to listen, when I no longer recognize the comfort of a quiet presence, when no words will help, when I lose sight of what is most important, I will want On Living within arm's reach, always. I love this book."

I wish I had written that. Me too. This book is the book of 2016 for me. I expect I will read it again and urge anyone I know (and don't know) to read it too. It's a lifeline.

[Ray Foy · Rating 5 out of 5]

On Living is Kerry Egan’s recounting of stories told to her by hospice patients during her years as a chaplain. I found it readable and engaging in relating the wisdom and healing Ms Egan found from listening to what people with little time left had to say. Their stories are sometimes heart-rending, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, but never morbid. While it will make the open-minded reader think about confronting death, this book, as the title indicates, is really about confronting life.

Ms Egan is unflinchingly honest in relating the experiences of her patients and of her work trying to help them. She shows us people struggling to cope with incapacity and life’s impending end. She also shows us her brush with psychosis that prompted her hospice work. These dark passages are balanced, however, with commentary informed by her Harvard Divinity School education and the enlightenment she takes from her patients’ tales. Indeed, her knack for squeezing meaning from experience infused her first book, Fumbling (her story of hiking the 500 mile Camino de Santiago in northern Spain), and kept me reading this one.

Though it concerns dying, On Living does not dwell on death. It shows those who are dying as carrying on, as well as they can, to their last day. Many take comfort from religion, but some don’t. Very often, their concerns are mostly for those they will leave behind. Where they are different from people not in a hospice, Ms Egan tells us, is that they know their time is short. So all they do and say takes on an urgency that we should mark.

Ms Egan’s chapters are essays on themes relating to the experiences of one or more patients. She tells the dying person’s story and relates it to her own life. Very often, she makes a quick identification with a patient’s views. For instance, when one impressed upon her that since life is all shades of gray, we shouldn’t get hung up on rules. Following that maxim led to her being reprimanded for bending her job’s rules. While some might judge her unfavorably for such an episode, I see in it an intellectual honesty and empathy that must make her a great chaplain. It certainly makes her a compelling writer.

There are also in this book (as in Fumbling) paranormal highlights. I think they enhance the subject matter. They are described in her incidents with the “medicine woman” and with her “guardian angel.” Such passages are powerful because they come from someone not given to supernatural themes. They don’t detract from her central purpose but rather support it and emphasize life’s wonder. Such wonder is, perhaps, more readily seen when dealing with distress, such as dying.

Ms Egan says:

There’s nothing stopping you from acting with the same urgency the dying feel.

Feeling that urgency is, I think, this book’s central message. Such feeling creeps upon us as we grow older, if we’re honest with ourselves. We can dread it or let it spur us to a greater appreciation of life. This theme leavens the stories and central narrative of On Living and makes it a worthy resource for inspiration and personal growth.

There is a continuum in Ms Egan’s two books. From Fumbling to On Living, we see the maturation of the young Camino pilgrim into the experienced, enlightened, hospice chaplain. Even so, the young seeker is still there, searching out the truth of life in her daily pilgrimage with a desire to share her insights with the world.

I highly recommend On Living as an inspirational and thoughtful read. Don’t let the hospice stories aspect put you off. The book’s title accurately describes its theme; this is not a funeral dirge. I do suggest, though, that you read Fumbling as well, so as to appreciate Ms Egan’s personal evolution.

The stories in this book remind us that we’re all facing certain death. You can take that as morbid, or let it prompt you to act with an urgency for life.

[SheReaders Book Club · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this book is powerful. The part where one of her patients says that as a society, we shower babies with love and affection but forget that dying people need that amount of love too. Life gets harder as you get older. This book if full of stories that make you stop, think, and reflect. This book was a little blessing and I encourage any human to read it because the reality is, we are ALL dying people.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was drawn to read this book because the author reports on her time spent with dying patients in hospitals and hospices and I am a hospice volunteer. I was very taken with how articulate she is about difficult topics. She doesn't pretend to have answers, yet she points to ways of thinking about life and death and questions that are amazingly helpful. I am going to buy a personal copy as I will want to reread this again and again.

[D.L. Mayfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in two days, and sobbed quite a bit. Short, intense, beautiful, and complicated--and all about death (which means it was all about living).

[Xanthe McCoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made me want to read more books about dying people. Who knew

[riley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would recommend this book to absolutely anyone (great audiobook narrated by the author too!) with the warning that it will make you cry and want to hug all your loved ones

[Travel Writing · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stumbled on this book in the one bookstore in Dubai. It caught my eye, because there was only one title on the shelf and it addressed death, which is a dodgy thing here in the UAE. There are no hospices, death is something generally dealt with 'within the home' and if they address it at all within the culture, they couch it in palliative care and never mention the dying end of things, just the services end of things.

I was a volunteer at Pathways Hospice in Colorado. Have been with two friends and my brother as they journeyed towards their own deaths. I have a heart for hospice work and am sad that it is so blatantly disregarded and dismissed as a potential where I live now, so being able to touch back into it through Egan's book was such a pleasure.

Egan's book is only 200 pages long and brimming with hope and love, memoir and mindfulness, love and grief. I actually had to turn around and start reading it again, because there is just so much there. Not overwhelmingly there, it is a well crafted book and Egan's ability to hold story: to weave and unfold and to bring to surface so much emotion, so many experiences, including her own, is exquisite.

I am in awe of how seamlessly she is able to do all of this storytelling and do it with warmth and humility and not tipping into the maudlin or macabre, and not one ounce of pity or cloying annoyance.

The book is pure delight. How odd of a thing to say when speaking of hospice work and dying people and the horrors of drug induced psychosis, but Egan is that talented. The book is a delight. There were parts that I found myself gently weeping (the turkey and meningitis) and other bits where I laughed out loud (wind in the nether regions).

Egan has mentioned several times in interviews that she never thought she would ever write another book (this is her second), but I so hope she does write more. She has a powerful and beautiful voice and I would adore to hear any of the 100's of other stories that she has "bundled in her heart."

Quotes I enjoyed:

" I don't know if these stories will make you wise.But maybe, in seeing that other people have done it, you'll find your own way to let your life be kind to you." p. 24

"Family is where we first experience love and where we first give it..." p. 28
"Sometimes that love is not only imperfect, it seems to be missing entirely." p.29

Two recent articles on why hospice care is so challenging in the UAE.

https://www.thenational.ae/uae/uae-s-...

https://www.khaleejtimes.com/when-the...

[Judith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a lovely book, written by a hospital chaplain who works primarily with hospice and other terminally ill patients. You might expect it to be depressing or sad but it was aptly named "Living", not "Dying". The author is the kind of nonjudgmental person you would want next to you if you were on your way out. Actually, she's the kind of person you would want next to you at a cocktail party too. She sees her job as providing a sympathetic ear and abiding by whatever quirks and eccentricities her patients express. She's cheerful without being annoyingly so and she sets forth the the stories of her patients with great love and empathy.

The book consists of various chapters describing stories that her patients told her throughout the years and I found them so interesting. One of my favorites was about a woman who had to give up her baby for adoption but regretted her decision the next day. After much argument, the social worker in charge told her that she couldn't get her baby back unless she could pay for her board and care, medical and other charges incurred at the home for unwed mothers. So she sold everything she possessed and collected all the money she could borrow from friends and family. When she went the home the social worker took the money and then handed her the baby and said, "You will be a great mother because you fought so hard to keep this baby."

There are lessons to be learned from this book as well. One of them is: get used to your body and accept it---don't spend your whole life hating your body.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author is a Chaplin who visits patients in hospitals, nursing homes and hospices--then tells their stories. Darlene's review says it all>> "What a beautiful little book! Part memoir, part inspirational, and part self-help..."

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a compilation of stories and lessons learned by a hospice chaplain. She explains her role. She is there, she’s present, she listens. Most of the people she visited and listened to would talk about their families and love. Egan also shares how her time and experience with the patients helped to heal her. This book was not my favorite, but I love the premise. I believe there is much we can learn from those around us, every single person! And this book reminded me again of the importance of those who might feel passed over – those who are sick, those who are old. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all be present for those around us, particularly those who might need us most.

Here are a few quotes I liked:

“A few patients before Gloria had told that they wished other people could learn from their life stories…. I had been holding on to patients’ stories for many years by then…. I hoarded them, locked them away in my heart. Often, but not always, my patients found some measure of peace as we talked. Often, but not always, their faith in something good and greater than themselves was affirmed. Often, but not always, they found strength they didn’t know they had to make amends with the people in their lives, and courage to move forward without fear toward their deaths. Always, they taught me something (p. 3).”

“I don’t know if listening to other people’s life stories as they die can make you wise, but I do know that it can heal your soul. I know this because those stories healed mine (p. 5).”

“I sat with my patients. I looked to see whether they seemed comfortable, and if they didn’t I talked to the nurse or aide. I might have gently touched their hands or arms if it seemed to relax them. I might have sung to them. I might have picked up and shown them the photographs and objects on their dressers, if there were any. But mostly, I just did the most basic, and the most difficult, work of a chaplain: I tried to be present (p. 13).”

“Hospice chaplains are sort of the opposite of storytellers. We’re story holders (p. 17).”

“‘What do people who are sick and dying talk to the student chaplain about?’…. ‘Mostly we talk about their families (p. 25).’”

“They talk about the love they felt and the love they gave. Often they talk about the love they didn’t receive or the love they didn’t know how to offer, or about the love they withheld or maybe never felt for the ones they should have loved unconditionally. They talked about how they learned what love is, and what it is not. And sometimes, when they are actively dying…they reach out their hands to things I cannot see and they call their parents’ names (p. 27).”

“People talk to the chaplain about their families because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives. That is how we talk about the big spiritual questions of human existence (p. 28).”

“The meaning of our lives cannot be found in books or lecture halls or even churches or synagogues. It’s discovered through these acts of love. If God is love, and I believe that to be true, then we learn about God when we learn about love. The first, and usually the last, classroom of love is the family (p. 29).”

“Too often, it’s only as people realize that they will lose their bodies that they finally appreciate how truly wonderful the body is (p. 58).”

“I couldn’t give Reggie new lungs, but I could offer him the most powerful thing a chaplain, or any of us, has: my presence (p. 68).”

“Life is a million choices, and every choice is a choice not to do something else, and so regrets accrue with life. It’s inevitable. Thinking through those regrets, though, gives any one of us a chance to think about what we wish had been different. It’s a chance to think about what we feel is missing in our lives, what we hope could be different. Most important, even if just in a small way, it’s a chance to act on that understanding (p. 70).”

“‘You have to live in the gray, or you got no kindness in your heart (p. 81).’”

“Things are never only as they appear. My hospice patients have taught me that. There are always layers to people’s lives, unseen memories under every face, every decision, every movement or lack of movement (p. 85).”

“Kindness is not the same of niceness… It is acknowledging that no life is as it seems on the surface. It is understanding that we never know all the layers in a life, and choosing to speak and act from that difficult gray place in all of us (p. 87).”

“God promised His people comfort. He promised that although they might suffer, they would never be destroyed. He promised that even if they turned away from him, he would never stop loving them (p. 101).”

“The desire to be seen and known and accepted for who one really is comes up time and again with my families and patients (p. 102).”

“Who do you believe yourself to be? It’s a strange question, right? But trying to answer it honestly tells a person so much about themselves (p. 105).”

“‘You have to be tough because you’re not strong. That’s how it works (p. 108).’”

“The things you lose do shape who you become… But the losses don’t obliterate what came before (p. 111).”

“A chaplain is there to help you figure out what you believe, what gives you comfort, the meaning of your life, who God is to you (p. 118).”

“Sarah’s choice was not to change. Instead, she let go of the regret for her nature that she had been carrying around. She let go of the regret for a life she didn’t lead and embraced the one she had. She made small changes that made her happy now, but she didn’t need to change her past (p. 130).”

“I couldn’t change any pieces of what happened. All I could change was how I saw it…. A change of insight, of understanding who they really were—a person so beloved by God that they were saved, not by what they did but simply because they were. The world was not born anew, but the way they saw it was. The leaves had always been green; they just had never noticed how beautiful green is. Countless rays of sunshine had landed on their skin all their lives; they had just never felt what was always there. Was it the awareness of a world so alive that made them realize they were loved (p. 131)?”

“When you don’t know that you’re lovable as you are, you need someone to show you (p. 151).”

“The freedom to believe people is one of the joys of being a chaplain. Other health care providers have to be suspicious by nature…. But a chaplain is allowed to believe her patients (p. 157).”

“‘How I talk to my angel and what I talk about with my angel is private… But if you want to learn to communicate with yours, I’d suggest you start by asking him his name. That’s just good manners (p. 160).’”

“‘You’re not supposed to plow through writing, or life… You’re supposed to let it fly… God never calls you to do something without also giving you the ability to complete it (p. 164).’”

“‘I try to be loveful… We shower so much love on babies and children… But as we grow up, it stops. No one showers love on grown-ups. But I think we need more love as we get older, not less. Life gets harder, not easier, but we stop loving each other so much, just when we need love most… I need love…. One day, when I was lying here, I realized how old God is. He is so old. He must need so much love. People are always demanding so much from him, but who is there to shower him with love? So I thought that was something I could do. That’s what I do all day: I try to love God (p. 171).’”

“When someone tells you the story of their suffering, they are probably still suffering in some way…. When people tell their stories again and again, turning them over and over, they’re trying to make or find meaning in them. That meaning is something they have to discover for themselves (p. 180).”

“If you want to apologize, then apologize now. If you want to tell someone you’re proud of them, say it right now. If you want to express your love, all up and say, ‘I love you.’ If you want to ask for forgiveness, do it this second, while there is still time to do the actual work that’s involved in seeking and granting forgiveness and arriving at some reconciliation. Don’t hold back (p. 194).”

“Anyone who has been through a great loss or a terrible trauma already knows that the experience defines you… At the very end of their lives, they defined themselves by the stories they chose to tell, of the hard things they had been through. But in watching how their stories developed—how they reflected on and reassessed and made new connections between those losses and other events of their lies—it had become clear to me that if those hard things define us, it was equally true that each of us gets to decide exactly how they define us (p. 203).”

“‘Promise yourself…that you’ll have a great life, no matter what happens (p. 206).’”

[Laura McGee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was absolutely lovely book written by a chaplain about people ruminating over their lives at the very end.
These people’s stories will stick with me for awhile I think. “Life is beautiful and then you leave it”.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given that the book’s primary contents are the hard-earned wisdom of a hospice chaplain, one might complain that the title ("On Living") is false advertising. To add more evidence to the charge, the book is especially focused on the sometimes dark paths to the last moments of Egan’s memorable patients while also including some wistful theorizing on mortality more generally.

But in my judgment the book really is about living and how to do it wisely. Some of the book’s most poignant moments arise from Egan’s patients holding on far too long to secrets, both good and bad, or from patients longing for medical relief so as to undo their life’s many mistakes. To have just one more chance to meet with one’s estranged daughter and ex-wife, to say that you know you failed them and you can do better. Similarly, toward the end of the book, Egan includes a plea for readers to focus less on their overhyped “last words” and more on one’s immediate relationships. People’s actual last words often come in the midst of a medically-induced mental fog or abruptly after a long spell of unconsciousness, leaving the would-be sage little time to gather their thoughts before passing on.

Early in the book, Egan recounts how a professor once asked her what her clients tended to talk about as they approached death. God? Not much? The meaning of life? Not really. Prayer? Occasionally, but just that. Egan’s answer: mostly their families. Egan does not infer thereby that this shows that family is the most important thing in life, but rather something more interesting. Most people do not have profound thoughts on the meaning of life in the style used in philosophy seminars. So it would be strange indeed if they suddenly became Camus or Kierkegaard at the 11th hour. But people often do have thoughts on the so-called big questions of life, though their medium of discussion of those things just is discussion of the person’s family. As Egan puts it, “people talk to the chaplain about their families because that is howwe talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” (28).

I read the book as, in part, a sustained argument for this last point. In each chapter some larger point about suffering, love, regret, sacrifice, or patience is illustrated through her patient’s stories of familial or interpersonal struggle. In this way Egan goes some distance in showing, not merely telling, her audience the deeper truth about this connection between the ultimate questions of human experience and talk of families. Throughout the book, Egan demonstrates a sharp eye for informative details in the stories and I audibly gasped more than once when a narrative’s twist was revealed. But if the book were just that it would be a lesser book than what it actually is. Egan also includes stories of vulnerability from her own experience with mental illness and some of her mistakes as a chaplain. In these episodes she shows how these challenges or lapses in judgment have narrowed the empathetic distance between herself and her patients while also demonstrating a dose of humility about her own powers and decision-making as a chaplain.

Another technique that Egan used throughout the book was including a series of questions and comments from friends, family, and peers that served as a kind of FAQ for people curious about hospice chaplaincy. If questions immediately arise in your mind about what this work is like, Egan will likely answer them somewhere here. In so doing Egan simultaneously allows herself the space to address the questions with care and patience while also indirectly inviting the reader to sympathize with her given that the questions or common responses to her work are often put in a less than kind fashion. Yes, she does spend her working life around “the dying” (as people often put it), but, as is suggested from what I’ve said above, it is far more interesting than that and if you doubt that, give the book a try. The book short, (just over 200 pages) and I probably read it too fast (two sittings), but it was just that fun (if a book about hospice conversations can be “fun”).

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and will probably read it again in a few years when I’ll likely have a different perspective on these issues. In a few cases, I wanted to dispute some of her theological and philosophical musings, but in general I found her to be a thoughtful and wise writer who I’d definitely turn to again.

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I am thinking of rereading it and its only been a year since I read it the first time.
This book is full of wisdom based on the author's experience as a hospice chaplain. I may have read it as a senior in college, but I think anyone in any stage of life has a lot to gain from reading this book.
My favorite chapters were some of the shortest in which Kerry Egan chose a topic and included a range of thoughts and feelings on said topic from the elderly patients she worked with. The chapter that revolved around movement and dance especially resonated with me. The best nights are truly the ones filled with music, laughter, and dancing, and no matter how crazy life gets, chances to do so should not be passed by.
There is also a lot to be said about the importance of individualized end-of-life care from her experiences. I recently read the book "Being Mortal" by Atul Gwande which does much to explain what we give up towards the end of our lives when we try to pursue "accepted" paths of elder care in American society. I think these two books pair well with each other if you want to understand how health care professionals in hospice and geriatrics are finding innovative ways to help people have satisfying ends to their lives, and continue living the way the want to, despite illnesses and ailments from aging.

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first heard about this book through an interview with the author on NPR, and the book felt very much like the interview, very conversational in style. The book weaves three threads together: the author's own suffering when her son was born, her life and work as a hospice chaplain, and how people perceive what she does in that work. She is a good storyteller, and the book includes the types stories that dying people have told her, and how she has learned to be present to them and their families as their days come to an end. She also shares some of the situations where she feels she has failed the people she has been called upon to serve. The tone of this little book is surprisingly very hopeful, as she learned to make sense of her own losses and failings. She urges her readers to do what one of her patients told her, to "promise yourself.....you'll have a great life, no matter what happens."

[Shivangi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sweet book with some touching insights, but I was left a little wanting by the slow pace and the obviousness of the author's observations. There was also some talk about the author's own experience with psychosis, which she never completely explained. Instead, she kept referencing to it in bits and pieces, which was annoying.

I wish she had delved more deeply into whichever stories she took up, especially her own. It felt a bit like the author had pieced together bits and pieces of stories from her notes and not spent enough time connecting them. On the bright side, some paragraphs are full of wisdom. The whole book has a stick-with-you peaceful simplicity, and I hope I retain the good bits fondly.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book tremedously. I love how she was able to share real stories of people that she had encountered during her hospice chaplain times. This book is important to teach how people are still living even if they are going through hospice and still have so much to offer. I especially liked the lady who said she wanted compassion because of her condition, not pity.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Kindness is not the same as niceness or putting our heads in the sand, or avoiding conflict. It is acknowledging that no life is as it seems on the surface. It’s is the understanding that we never know all the layers in a life and it is choosing to speak and act from that difficult gray place in all of us.”


What a powerful powerful read.

[Molly Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written book with messages for everyone. I've never read anything quite like it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to everyone. The "Death and Grieving" subject title the booksellers are giving it is misleading. The title says it best: this is a book on living.

[Carol Catinari · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hospice chaplain writes the stories of those she has tended. Many life lessons within, and applied to her own personal situation. My upshot...just do it! and do it now!!

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kerry Egan is pastoraal werker in een hospice, waar ze stervende mensen op spiritueel vlak begeleidt richting hun afscheid van het leven. In dit boek vertelt ze verhalen over patiënten die een grote indruk op haar maakten, om uiteenlopende redenen, en ze verbindt die verhalen aan haar eigen leven, met name aan de periode na haar bevalling, toen ze in een drugspsychose belandde. Mooie en soms bizarre verhalen, bijvoorbeeld van een vrouw die zegt bezeten te zijn en die een medicijnman erbij wil halen om haar daarvan te bevrijden, of het verhaal van de man die te groot was om, eenmaal overleden, door de deuropening de kamer uit te dragen, waardoor er allerlei capriolen uitgehaald moesten worden terwijl zijn vrouw daarbij was. De kracht en wijsheid van sommige hoofdpersonen is indrukwekkend.

[Kirsten Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I take a deep breath before I enter the room, and I ask God for help. I remind myself why I'm there, and I let go of everything else in my mind. I try to focus love in my heart. Then I go in and say hello, and notice if the person notices me. Then I smile, but not too big a smile, and I tell them my name. I try to create a feeling of peace and acceptance and love with how I move and sit and look. I focus all my energy on their face... And then I imagine a giant bubble of love encompassing the patient and me."
This book touched me deeply. My favorite quotes:

"To create a sacred space" the chaplain "has to offer her loving presence first"

"The meaning of our lives cannot be found in books or lecture halls or even churches or synagogues. It's discovered through these acts of love. If God is love, and I believe that to be true, then we learn about God when we learn about love."

"The spiritual work of being human is learning how to love and how to forgive."

"I've learned over the years that these heavy, painful, anguish-filled moments... these moments when I so badly want to say something to break the tension, are *
exactly the moments I need to stay silent. They are the moments I need to hold still, and hold that sacred space open. Because when I can hold still and hold on in that place, no matter how hard it is for both of us, something can happen."

"Hope is the belief that better things are possible. Regret shows us what those better things we hope for are. Regret hones hope, sharpens and clarifies the desire at the heart of it. If you're alive, even if you're on hospice, you can still work on making those hopes come true.

As a very young woman, I thought regret was a failure, something to avoid at all costs. It is, in fact, a window. It's an unasked-for chance, an uncomfortable prompt, a painful encouragement to imagine what else could be. If you let it, regret can be a vehicle to hope. But you have to accept it first... in order to see clearly what it is that you wish was different in your life."

"The things you lose do shape who you become. There's no getting around that. But the losses don't obliterate what came before. The loss of that mother's two babies did not negate the fact that she had become a mother and that she would remain a mother after their deaths."

"When we dismiss an experience as 'not real,' what we are actually rejecting is the person's attempt at making meaning of the experience. That's a cruel thing to do. Attempting to find make meaning is perhaps the central task of the spiritual life."

Asking "What does this experience mean to you?" is the most helpful question

"It might seem strange to think that grief has a life, but it does. It develops and grows. like an organism... When grief develops and grows, the suffering at the heart of it changes, too. It becomes less acute, less raw and fiery. I'm not sure it diminishes, but it somehow becomes diffused across the memories that surround the loss at the heart of it. It seems less concentrated, and therefore more bearable."

"When someone tells you the story of their suffering, they are probably still suffering in some way. No one else gets to decide what that suffering means, or if it has any meaning at all. And we sure as hell don't get to tell someone that God never gives anybody more than they can handle or that God has a plan. We do not get to cut off someone's suffering at the pass by telling them it has some greater purpose. Only they get to decide if that's true. All we can do is sit and listen to them tell their stories, if they want to tell them. And if they don't. we can sit with them in silence.

When people tell their stories again and again, turning them over and over, they're trying to make or find meaning in them. That meaning is something they have to discover for themselves. As painful as the process might be, there is no circumnavigating it, either with the most thoughtful ideas you can offer or with the most hackneyed cliches. The meaning a person finds will almost never be the same one you can come up with. It will always be richer, more nuanced, more surprising."

[Bekka · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book meant a lot to me. I fell in love with Kerry Egan’s work when I first read her essay, “What People Talk About When They Die.” She’s got a dream job of mine, hospital chaplain. The appeal of the job to me is how Egan explains, “Hospital chaplains are the opposite of storytellers, we’re story holders.” Their job isn’t to preach but to create a space for people to look at their stories, and make meaning of them. To me, few jobs sound as rewarding and sacred. Maybe I googled Harvard Divinity School as soon as I finished the book. One day.

“Kindness is not the same as niceness, or putting our heads in the sand, or avoiding conflict. It is acknowledging that no life is as it seems on the surface. It is understanding that we never know all the layers in a life, and choosing to speak and act from that difficult gray place in all of us.”

“I think it's because it's startling every time - every single time - that such beauty and such loss coincide in every life, in every soul, in every memory.”

[Kimball · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars. The Universe answered my desire of finding another book about someone's job (see my notes on 400 Things Cops Know: Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman that I read last week). A little morbid but introspective, hopeful book right here. Lots of gems to be taken from this as you might expect from someone who works in Hospice such as not hating our bodies, refraining from judging others until you know the full situation, etc. She mentioned people dying alone with no family by their side. I wonder what percentage of people this happens to. What a crock. I also wonder how much training does someone who works in Hospice need. They seem pretty restricted by things they can do or say so they mainly just listen and enjoy the moment. This was also fitting to read right after Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao. People just want to give their life meaning. That meaning is different for everyone. When they are on their deathbed it is apparent how they are trying to do that. I liked how she said that people don't change when they are dying or that dying doesn't make you into something else. It's just a verb and you're still the same person (IE a jerk before a jerk now).

[switching to StoryGraph: supernumeraryemily · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend recommended this book to me, and I am grateful for them.

"On Living" is made of stories of Egan's work as a hospice chaplain, mixed with her own thoughts and life experiences. The book was gentle, warm, and deep, like I imagine Egan's chaplain presence to be. I was inspired by the openness and self-reflection of Egan. Her words on life and death were simple and profound, somehow holding both a deep knowledge alongside unresolved questions. And it managed to not feel cliche or hokey in any way.

The book's lessons are accessible and powerful, and Egan portrays meaning as something developed over a lifetime and found in moments, something that is multitudinous and vastly different from person to person. The book holds so many truths and it was a pleasure to read through them. I will be rereading the book again (after I lend it to friends) and am certain I will get something different from it next time.

Throughout the book, Egan portrays herself as vastly open to different ways of interpreting the world and life. Because of this I was surprised by her immediate dismissal of the concept of evil spirits and possession. I suppose people have to draw boundaries somewhere, but the way she treated this topic upon first introduction felt a lot harsher than how she talked about (for example) being born-again, or the existence of angels and took me aback.