None of Us Get Out of Here Alive

Another wonderful review of The Amateur’s Guide To Death and Dying; Enhancing the End of Life has appeared. This time the review comes from my colleague, the very talented author, Mikaya Heart. Her review appears on the Blogging Authors website.


Click on the Blogging Authors’ banner above for the full review.

In our society, death is a taboo subject, and many people won’t talk about it at all. I’ve always been fascinated with the process of dying, and how someone’s energy remains after they die, often affecting us on a deep level. I recently read a great book on the subject by Richard Wagner. A gay man, an ex-Catholic priest, and a psychotherapist, Richard was first exposed to the process of dying during the AIDS epidemic in the early eighties when his friends were dying in droves. I won’t say any more about his own journey since it’s all in the book, but rest assured—he knows what he’s talking about. As he says, none of us will get out of here alive—so let’s talk about how to make that process of transition easier.

Richard started a group called Paradigm specifically designed to help sick, elder and dying people and their friends and families avoid the kind of nightmares that he had seen repeated again and again, based on society’s phobia about death. Perceiving that basic information is being withheld from dying people, he ran countless groups on death and dying in the San Francisco Bay Area, and has helped thousands of individuals over the years. He took groups of ten people for ten weeks, inviting various experts to come and give presentations on different aspects of what is involved in dying: legalities such as wills and executors; talking to one’s family and friends; assisted dying; what to expect of your body as it gives up; spiritual aspects of dying, and other topics.

The Amateur’s Guide To Death and Dying is an in-depth account of one of these courses, profiling the ten people who attended it, each chapter covering a different week. Those ten fictional characters are, Richard says, “composites” of some of the real people who took his course over the years that he ran it. The reader gets to know the individuals very well (sometimes painfully well) throughout the course of the book, as they reveal their deepest inner fears in the safety of the group. They all become more familiar with the concept of death and how to deal with it. Some of them, interestingly, move further away from it, while some go the other way. They all become more empowered. This book is written from a personal perspective, which is essential for any good writing on such a personal subject. Richard deserves congratulations for being brave enough to deal with such a difficult topic in a very open, accepting and compassionate manner.

My only complaint is that I wanted more. Since this book is quite long enough as is, I hope that Richard and others will consider writing more books. Because, as a society, we have failed miserably in talking about the realities of death and dying, there is a great deal still to be discussed. How can relatives and friends help a person who is dying? Do dying people benefit from getting permission to die from those they are close to? How can we change our desperate need to hold on to what we call the state of living even when it is clearly time to let go? How can we learn to relate to the positive aspects of death? How does the energy of an individual affect us when they are no longer present in a body? Richard’s book touches on some of these very profound questions, but they (and many others) need to be addressed in greater depth.

Mikaya Heart is an award-winning author who writes on subjects as varied as orgasm, shamanism, sports, lesbianism, politics and travel. Her memoir, My Sweet Wild Dance, which won a Golden Crown Literary Award, was described as “soul-refreshment of the highest order.” Mikaya uses shamanic methods to teach people how to operate from a place of trust instead of fear.

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