📖 Book Title: The Last Gathering in Life: 25 Lessons a Funeral Director Learned from 1,000 Farewells

📖 Author: Chiang Chia-lung

📖 Publisher: Spring Publications

📖 Publication Year: 2020

📖 ISBN: 9789866572807

📖 Call Number: 489.6607 3120

📖 Description:

★★★ Featured Excerpt in Business Weekly, Issue 1250 ★★★

A fulfilling life, perhaps, is about being able to say a proper goodbye while there is still time.

Having orchestrated nearly a thousand funerals, a funeral director shares moving stories of these final, "fulfilling" gatherings.

◆ A book that guides you on how to bring life to a "fulfilling" close ◆

When facing the loss of a loved one—whether a 40-year-old wife taken by cancer, an 11-year-old daughter gone too soon, a father never met, or a lifelong partner—our deepest wish is to arrange a meaningful and fulfilling farewell for them.

Through the eyes of a funeral director, we come to understand the unpredictability of life and witness the vulnerabilities of human nature. It reminds us to cherish the precious moments spent with those we love, ensuring a perfect goodbye without leaving any regrets.

Death often arrives too swiftly, and our preparation is always too slow. While time permits, you and I should both ponder:

What can we prepare? How should we choose when we have a choice? And what do we do when time has already run out?

The final gathering in life is all about the emotional connection between the deceased and their family, and even with all those who come to pay their respects. Sometimes, these feelings hinge on a single "pivotal detail" that truly makes the deceased the central figure of their own farewell service.

The encounters a funeral director faces are not all heartwarming tales; rather, they are diverse expressions of real life performed by actual people, filled with laughter, tears, and raw human nature.

An 11-year-old girl with congenital muscular dystrophy—a condition where some patients live a normal lifespan, while others suffer from rapid progression, leading to muscle weakness and respiratory failure.

Even the smallest among the deceased "once" held a life. Occasionally, seeing an innocent baby photo in the funeral home's memorial section creates a striking, heartbreaking contrast against the rows of mature and elderly portraits nearby. By tradition, elders are neither required nor permitted to offer daily food rituals for infants. Yet, morning and night, the parents would still place a freshly made bottle of milk on the table, alongside a washbasin holding a little rubber duck that squeaks when squeezed. Watching those young parents stand frozen before the photograph, my only thought was to make this little girl's farewell service truly special.

A fulfilling life, perhaps, is about being able to say a proper goodbye while there is still time.