Parting Ways

Parting Ways explores the emergence of new end-of-life rituals in America that celebrate the dying and reinvent the roles of family and community at the deathbed. Denise Carson contrasts her father’s passing in the 1980s, governed by the structures of institutionalized death, with her mother’s death some two decades later. Carson’s moving account of her mother’s dying at home vividly portrays a ceremonial farewell known as a living wake, showing how it closed the gap between social and biological death while opening the door for family and friends to reminisce with her mother. Carson also investigates a variety of solutions--living funerals, oral ethical wills, and home funerals--that revise the impending death scenario. Integrating the profoundly personal with the objectively historical, Parting Ways calls for an “end of life revolution” to change the way of death in America.

Denise Carson is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and a columnist at the Orange County Register, where she tells stories of how people celebrate the end of life.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Prologue 
Introduction 

PART I END-OF-LIFE CELEBRATIONS AND PRE-DEATH RITUALS

1. Her Choice: Two Paths Leading to the Same Destination
2. Living Funeral: Celebrating the End of Life
3. Her Life Review: Reliving the Past in the Present
4. Legacy of Memories: Telling Life Stories and Last Wishes
5. Her Season of Lasts: Traditional, Seasonal, Communal Rituals
6. Oral Ethical Will: Video Recording Valuable Last Words
7. Her Living Wake: Reminiscing and Farewell Party
8. Vigil: Holding Hands at the Eleventh Hour

PART II POST- DEATH AND MEMORIALIZING RITUALS

9. Her Twenty-First-Century Memorial Service, His Twentieth- Century Funeral
10. Home Funeral: Eco- Friendly Way Out
11. Holistic Approach: Design- It- Yourself Funeral and Cremation Witnessing
12. The Living Unveiling: Technology Innovates Memorializing
13. Her Truth: Finding Life after Death

Notes
Bibliography