I: Thinking about dying : twelve classic visions. The certainty of death / George Herbert ("Mortification")
The figure of death (from the Katha-Upanishad)
The romance of death / Charles Dickens (from Dombey and Son)
Where are the snows of yesteryear? / Manuel Bandeira ("Profundamente")
In the midst of life we are in death / John Donne (from Devotions upon emergent occasions)
The morality of death / Flannery O'Connor ("A good man is hard to find")
Death in war / William Shakespeare (from Henry V) ; Wilfred Owen ("Anthem for doomed youth")
Acceptance beyond fear / Montaigne ("To philosophize is to learn to die")
Eat, drink, and be merry / Edward FitzGerald (from The rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám)
Fate as the will of God (from the Quran)
The phenomenon of hope / Dietrich von Hildebrand (from Jaws of death, gate of heaven)
The irreplaceable dead / Dylan Thomas ("A refusal to mourn the death, by fire, of a child in London")
II: When we die. The experience of death / Leo Tolstoy (from The death of Ivan Ilych)
The ease of death / Ernest Sandeen ("Do not go gentle")
The testimony of the dying / Carol Zaleski (from The life of the world to come)
Choosing suicide / A. Alvarez (from The savage god)
Choosing to live / Gilbert Meilaender ("I want to burden my loved ones")
Hastening death / Jeffrey E. Ford ("Mercy killing at Golgotha")
Holding still for death / Christian de Chergé ("Last testament")
III: When others die. The experience of grief / C.S. Lewis (from A grief observed)
Burying the dead / Ralph Abernathy (from And the walls came tumbling down)
Dying alone / Alane Salierno Mason ("Reconciliation of unbelief")
Watching others die / Peter De Vries (from The blood of the lamb)
The uses of ritual / Milton Himmelfarb ("Going to shul")
Refusing consolation / Jody Bottum ("All that lives must die")
The life of the world to come (from The book of common prayer).
