The last passage

by Donald Heinz

Is death merely the cessation of life? Are our final years simply a wearing out of the body? Are hospitals and funeral homes - the bureaucratic machinery of death - capable of handling the profound spiritual dimension of dying? In The Last Passage, Donald Heinz offers answers to these questions in a book that urges us to "recover a death of our own" and to view our final years as a fulfillment, a "last career." Seeking appropriate models for such a reconstruction, Heinz offers a fascinating overview of the many ways death has been envisioned and ritualized throughout human history, from the Tibetan Book of the Dead to 15th/century Christian ars moriendi - manuals on the art of dying - and from Jean Paul Sartre to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Finally, Heinz shows us how we might create rituals through the use of music, visual arts, dance, drama, and language that would enable us to approach death with reverence, as the spiritual consummation of our lives.