How to Live Forever

A debut self-help book offers suggestions for practical and emotional end-of-life planning. In this manual, Best draws on her experiences working as both a nurse and a mediator as well as on lessons learned from her own relatives' end-of-life processes to guide readers through establishing wills, making health care plans, and telling their stories to loved ones. In concise chapters, the author explains each topic, provides examples, and presents readers with a step-by-step checklist of items to discuss and consider. While the volume spends some time on concrete legal and financial aspects of end-of-life planning, Best generally takes a holistic view, encouraging readers to make the most of relationships, think about how they wish to be remembered, and figure out what kind of rituals they would like survivors to commemorate them with. The author urges readers to accept the idea of death and position themselves to meet it as productively and positively as possible, giving and receiving forgiveness when necessary in order to end relationships on the best note. Best's explanations of technical terms are clear and easy to follow ("Supported decision-making recognizes, respects, and protects your right to make choices for as long as you are able"), and the book's tone is supportive and comforting, an appropriate fit for the subject matter. The anecdotes that appear throughout provide solid examples of the advantages of planning in advance, demonstrating how an estate can languish in probate if its disposition is not arranged ahead of time, and showing how a person who leaves instructions for a positive celebration of life instead of a funeral can leave friends and family with a sense of love and appreciation rather than sadness. The manual's dictum to "think about our lives as stories" delivers a unique angle on developing an understanding of a full and well-lived life as well as a sense of structure that may be valuable to readers in plotting their own trajectories. Best also recommends several works that the audience may find useful, particularly Atul Gawande's Being Mortal. In addition, the book includes helpful references and a bibliography. A thoughtful and readable guide to making crucial death arrangements and estate decisions.

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