Author: Frederica de Graff

Form: Paperback

Pages: 152

by Frederica de Graff

How do we respond to a patient or loved one facing death with all of our mind and heart, yet without trying to feel pain or emotions that are not our own? The person approaching death does not need us to live through their pain but to offer a creative response to suffering that is rooted in respect and reverence. From the author’s perspective as an Orthodox Christian (and that of her mentor, the late physician and bishop Met. Anthony Bloom) hospice caregiver Frederica de Graaf shares her conviction that death is an entry into Life and shows how family, friends, clergy, and medical staff can support a dying person of any age, creed, or circumstance.

This is the most profound book we have ever read on physical, psychological, and spiritual care for the dying and for their relatives. A Dutch convert to Orthodoxy, Frederica de Graff was a spiritual daughter of the late Metropolitan Anthony Bloom. After establishing her own medical practice in London, she moved to Moscow in 2001, where she has worked at the First Moscow Hospice since her arrival. In these pages, Frederica couples the penetrating observations of Metropolitan Anthony on the end of earthly life with her own profound experiences of death, love, and personhood as her patients live out their final weeks.