Dying With Dad: Tough Talks for Easier Endings

Yvonne Caputo is no stranger to death. Before she was thirty, she could list seventeen family members and friends who had passed away. Among them were her uncle Claude and his son Jimmy, both dead by suicide; her cousin Alan, murdered in Central Park; and her brother Mark, killed in a car accident. Each of these deaths left her with questions, the most important of which was: Why don't we talk about the end of life before the end of life?

Yvonne Caputo's first book, Flying with Dad, was about her father's experiences in World War II. But this wasn't what readers focused their questions on. Instead, they asked her about how she and her dad talked about how he envisioned his end-of-life experiences, how she walked him through his Five Wishes document and how, when the day came, she stopped the paramedics from reviving him.

In Dying with Dad, Yvonne shares the joy she felt when her father died on his terms. And the reason she knew what those terms were was because they had a heart-to-heart conversation about it before it was too late.

Working in a retirement facility, Yvonne saw what happens when we wait until when Dad is dying or when Mom is dying to talk about what the dying desire. While a living will and trust take care of the legalities involved in how we want to live our final days and how we want to die, an end-of-life conversation should go beyond medical treatment and estate planning. We need to talk about the emotional and the spiritual too.