160 pages paperback

The time to read this book is now. Not in some future moment when death comes suddenly into your life, but right now. Death is not something that must be hidden away in case it causes pain or grief, but something to be embraced whole-heartedly. In order to live our lives joyfully and fully, we must first understand and welcome death. Death is not something that happens once, and is an end. We experience a hundred little deaths everyday, as we die to each moment of our lives. It is a transition from one moment to another, from one state of being to something even more amazing and wonderful. Dying is the most natural step we will ever take in our lives.

The Celts believed in the transmigration of the soul, in the magical rhythm of life with a particular order of coming and going for each soul. As they celebrated every new stage of their lives with a ritual, they also honoured the passing on of a soul - the death of the physical body. Embedded in the natural order of things, women, the facilitators of birth and death, used to care for the dying, easing their transition from this world into the next.

Through her own hospice work, Phyllida Anam-Aire, of Irish descent herself, has brought the Celtic tradition of watching with the dying and travelling with the dead back into practice. With her Celtic background she integrates modern knowledge of the death process with the old wisdom of her ancestors and shows how a peaceful transition for the leaving person is possible, and how this process can be consciously supported by relatives or friends.