When you’ve compassionately aided people to leave the planet for 30 years—helped them be comfortable, reduced their pain and listened to their words—what emerges is not just a way of dying, but also a way of living. That’s what Becki Hawkins discovered in her uplifting and beautiful new book, TRANSITIONS: A Nurse’s Education About Life and Death.

Hawkins, who spent the heart of her career as an oncology and hospice nurse in Oklahoma, offers tenderly-rendered short recollections of those experiences that stayed with her…the one’s that touched her heart, took her breath away and opened her to a greater wisdom. It’s that wisdom which she shares with us—how we can live better, more richly, more wisely and with greater love before we, too, transition—and look back to wonder what we missed.