How to Say Goodbye: An Illustrated Field Guide to Accompanying a Loved One at the End of Life

“If you don’t know what to say, start by saying that… That opens things up.”

“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love,” Rilke wrote while ailing with leukemia. To comprehend the luckiness of death is to comprehend life itself. When a loved one is dying and we get to be by their side, it is a double luckiness — lucky that we got to have the love at all, and lucky, which is not everyone’s luck, t...