[For the CURRENT UP-TO-DATE VERSION of this book, plus update sheets, please see The Natural Death Handbook 4th ed.]
'Demonstrates ... that there are kinder
alternatives'
The Times
THE
NATURAL
DEATH
HANDBOOK
A manual for improving the quality of living and dying including:
Edited by the Natural
Death Centre
Converted to HTML by Merlyn Albery and Stephen Evans
'What could be more healthy than bringing
society's last taboo out of the closet?'
THE OBSERVER
All of us will have to cope with death and dying - our own, our parents', a friend's, or even, tragically, a child's. Yet it is the last taboo - rarely prepared for, usually ignored and mostly happening out of sight in hospitals and old people's homes.
THE NATURAL DEATH CENTRE, the educational charity which edited this handbook, believes that all of us should, and can, prepare for our own deaths and those of our friends and loved ones, and that this intense personal experience should as far as possible be under our own control, not that of medical professionals or big institutions.
This handbook (the latest edition is NOW available online) shows how to deal with and take back some family control over the process of death and dying. It includes deeply moving personal accounts of brave and 'conscious' deaths, practical advice on how to care for someone dying at home, a legal alternative to active euthanasia for the terminally ill, and advice on coming to terms with bereavement.
There is a 'Good Funeral Guide' to the best undertakers, natural burial grounds, crematoria and cemeteries; advice on how to organise a funeral without an undertaker; and an example of how to write a 'Living Will' that limits the amount of 'high tech' intervention to which you or your relatives can be subjected in a hospital.
From the spiritual and the mystical to the practical and the administrative, THE NATURAL DEATH HANDBOOK is an extraordinary and important book. At its heart is the belief that dignified dying at home - followed by a family designed funeral - can become usual rather that exceptional, and that death and dying need not be the acute trauma which they are for so many.
Other press comments on the Natural Death Centre:
'Demonstrates to people dissatisfied with
conveyor-belt funerals that there are kinder alternatives'
THE TIMES
'A novel and environmentally friendly approach
to death'
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
'Investigating Natural Death is a cheering experience
and I would recommend it to anyone facing bereavement'
MIDWEEK