Michael Wohl's father was a hippie determined to live life as he saw fit, regardless of the consequences. Childhood was fraught with uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous lapses in parental judgement. As a result Michael and his father Herschel had a somewhat distant connection and rarely saw each other. When his father died, Michael and his siblings (one of whom he hardly knew) set out to lay him to rest on a far-away island where his dad had died, escaping all his mistakes. What did he learn about his own life, his father and funerals in remote places from this unimaginable experience?

What does it take to prepare ourselves to do the work of anti-racism? At this time when there is an outcry against racism and oppression, many white Americans are confronting the hard truth that we benefit from the system that oppresses others.

Mary MacCracken and her husband Cal felt blessed to have a deep and loving marriage and two successful careers. They were living a life of true happiness when Mary and others around Cal began to notice that his memory was declining. Receiving a devastating diagnosis of Alzheimers, Mary and Cal committed to see it through together. But to keep that promise, ultimately Mary had to make tough decisions for Cal when he was no longer able to make them for himself. Finishing their love story would fall more heavily on her. Seeing him through to his death was such a remarkable part of their love story that she then spent the last 10 years of her own life capturing their story in her memoir, The Memory of All That.

What leads us to explore our relationship to death? For Angela Fama, it began when a terrible accident caused her to consider her own death. But she noticed that when she tried to talk about death, she met discomfort and resistance. Instead of dropping the conversation, she searched for ways to enter into it; to make others more comfortable with the subject. Out of this need of hers, the Death Conversation Game was born!

Amy Turner was, quite literally, hit by a truck. Although she seemed to have escaped serious injury (no broken bones, apparent mild concussion) she was haunted by symptoms for months. But even more than that, the traumas of her early childhood came hurtling back, inviting her to explore even more thoroughly how her father's attempted suicide and her mother's alcoholism had defined her life. Her deep exploration of all the ways she had internalized their struggles led her to a discovery of herself beyond what she could have imagined.

From the time she was a child, E.B.Bartels had a profound desire for pets in her life. Animals of every kind made her feel a kind of love and connection even deeper than many of her human relationships. But as she matured, the inherent losses she experienced with animals, who typically have relatively short life spans, caused her to explore love and grief. Now her new book, Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter, offers a wholehearted look at the love humans have had for animals through history and the ways we grieve them, then carry them with us throughout our lives.

The funeral industry does not always respond to the unique traditions and practices of their clients. What is important to the grieving person? Can the industry support grievers as they navigate their losses? Joél Simone Anthony brings her well cultivated spiritual outlook to these questions. Realizing how important her own traditions are to her she actively responds to the people who come to her, discovering what is meaningful to them and doing her best as a mortician to create ritual that incorporates those needs. She sees herself not only to helping with funerals and burials but also holding the griever in traditions that matter. And in that, she shares what comforts most; that grieving people are heard in their own experience and context.

Zander Masser was only 11 when his father died of AIDS, contracted because of his treatment for hemophilia. How much does a child know about his parent as a full human being? How would he carry his dad in his life going forward? It was twenty years later when Zander found his father's catalogue of photographs, taken over a long career. Begun as a desire to get his work out there, it became an exploration of Zander's relationship with his father and his own grief. While collecting more and more of his father's story, he realized all he had lost, and also reclaimed more than he knew he could!

Some people think that dying people increasingly speak nonsense, losing their grip on reality. But Lisa Smartt, a linguist trained to pay deep attention to words, realized as her father was dying that what he was saying was coherent and deeply moving, pointing to a world which she little understood and inviting an exploration of what he might be talking about. After his death, she hurtled headlong into a mission; collecting final words, convinced they had something profound to offer those of us who are not dying. The Final Words Project and her book, Words at the Threshhold: What We Say as We're Nearing Death, are the beautiful result.

Right at the beginning of her relationship with the love of her life, Joni Sensel had the disturbing epiphany that she would not have him for long. It turned out to be true. But before he died, it pushed her to engage fully and with all of her self for every moment with him. And, contrary to the fact and science-based self she was used to, even losing him proved to her that intuition and mystery are real. How did their love, her grief and all the times she felt his presence after his death inform life going forward?