Final Conversations: Helping the Living and the Dying Talk to Each Other

Maureen P. Keeley & Julie M. Yingling
VanderWyk & Burnham (2007)
ISBN 9781889242309
Reviewed by Tyler R. Tichelaar for Reader Views (4/07)

“Final Conversations” by Keeley and Yingling is a long overdue book in the field of grief and death literature. Most books about death deal with grief or the death process; this book helps the grief process before death occurs so that interaction with the dying is a meaningful experience that leaves no regrets for the living.

Keeley and Yingling interviewed eighty-two people about their experiences with the dying and how they talked to their loved ones before the end. “Final Conversations” is primarily advice about how to talk to a dying loved one in a way that brings comfort to both the dying and the living. This conversation is referred to as “F-C talk” or final conversations talk. The book enlarges “conversation” to mean communication, be it verbal or by touching and body language. Different examples are proposed regarding how to say “I love you” or how to express love, if the words are difficult to say, by non-verbal communication, such as taking care of business for the dying, touching, and just spending time.
 
The book is broken into several chapters on different conditions that mark “F-C talk,” most notably how people deal with a death based on age—whether the person having the conversation with the dying is a child of a dying parent or grandparent, a teenager, someone middle-aged, or an elderly spouse. One of the most interesting sections was on spiritual messages—signs that the dying may be partially in communication with the life beyond, or signs after they died that they had come back to give a message or in some way comfort those left behind. The authors do not go in-depth into this area, but the examples reaffirm life-after-death in ways similar to many books on out-of-body experiences and reincarnation. An extremely useful part of the book was the section on healing broken relationships. Many examples were given of siblings or parents and children who heal a difficult relationship, or how the living can feel at peace even if the dying is unable or unwilling to have a healing final conversation.

My only criticism of the book is that no dying people were actually interviewed about their experiences with final conversations. The book is more for the living to cope with the process of losing a loved one. The authors stated they did not interview any of the dying who had had final conversations because they did not wish to add to the stress of dying for those people. However, I would have liked to hear from the dying what they most wanted and needed from people as they were dying. While I understand the difficulties of interviewing the dying, I think a chapter of interviews with the dying would enrich the book; the authors could perhaps interview the terminally ill who had “F-C talk” but then survived.

“Final Conversations” is a much needed book that is long overdue. It will be extremely helpful to anyone facing the loss of a loved one, or people who have lost someone and are grieving, or questioning themselves about what they did or should have done for a lost loved one. While it is a how-to book in some ways, the authors point out that their examples are not strict guidelines for how to talk to the dying, and that every relationship is different. The authors give good guidelines, but the real strength of the book is the stories of those who lost loved ones—reading “Final Conversations” is almost like being part of a grief support group. Both Kelley and Yingling should be commended for this important work.

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