Passings
Death, Dying, and Unexplained Phenomena
-
- 17,99 €
-
- 17,99 €
Publisher Description
From dream research and global belief systems to such unexplained phenomena as bright lights, prescient dreams, near-death and out-of-body experiences, Passings delves into every aspect of the end of life. Taking a scientific and anthropological approach, Carole A. Travis-Henikoff looks at how other cultures deal with death, how diverse kinds of death are treated differently, and how belief systems set the tone for grieving.
In addition to the use of science and anthropology, Travis-Henikoff includes both her own personal experiences with the end of life as well as the stories of others who help illustrate the striking realities of passing. Beginning with the many deaths that occurred during Travis-Henikoff’s childhood, Passings moves into an up-close-and-personal look at the tragic three-and-a-half-year period when Travis-Henikoff lost her father, husband, grandmother, mother, and daughter.
By combining the personal, the scientific, and the unexplained, Passings offers a comprehensive investigation into the end of life that allows readers to both examine their own individual beliefs about the subject and to gain a better understanding about how we as a species cope with death and dying.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the space of just three years, chef Travis-Henikoff (Dinner With a Cannibal) lost five family members: her husband to leukemia; her 80-year-old father to kidney failure; her grieving mother to suicide; her daughter, Kim, to blood clots; and her daughter-in-law to blood disease. Travis-Henikoff's struggle to accept these painful deaths was helped by a number of paranormal experiences, including Kim's premonitory dream (dying in a pool of ice water) and, three nights after her death, the appearance of Kim's spirit in "a thin crackling rod of shimmering white light." After Kim's death, Travis-Henikoff sought out others with stories of loss and the paranormal, finding people who "know, trust and love the sciences, yet fly gracefully through the cosmos of the metaphysical." Travis-Henikoff mines the family lore surrounding her great-grandmother, who held s ances, and her own history (including a near-fatal childhood asthma attack), for evidence that she (and her daughter) may have inherited psychic powers; she also considers what she witnessed in the moment of her father and her husband's deaths. Whatever readers believe regarding death and the supernatural, Travis-Henikoff's tender, wise memoir of love, grief and truth-seeking will help them accept death as an affirmation of life's value.
