Mrs. Hunter's Happy Death

Read an Excerpt

Lessons on Living from People Preparing to Die
I have known a few people who died with a spirit of apparent nonchalance, but for most the approach of death raises gut-level questions about the true meaning of life. Is there a God? What kind of God?

Lessons on Living from People Preparing to Die, Part 2
Through Barbara, Jim was experiencing what Charles Wesley, almost three centuries earlier, had called "free grace." For Jim, estranged from his first wife and their two grown children, meeting and marrying Barbara had marked the beginning

Reader's Guide
It is my great pleasure to introduce Mrs. Hunter to you. When I first read the story of her happy death I was simply overwhelmed. She was like no one I had ever met before, and yet she reminded me of so very many people.

What is the secret of people who die contented and fulfilled? What makes it possible for them to attain such spiritual heights as they approach their physical demise? What enables them to make death a completion of life, rather than a tragic end? And what can they teach us about life and death, love and loss, grief and spiritual growth?

The way we die, like the way we live, makes a difference — in our lives and the lives of others.

From time to time during his work as a pastor, John Fanestil has witnessed someone dying with remarkable and uplifting grace. Fanestil was moved yet puzzled by the spirit of happiness and holiness he observed. Contemporary literature on dying, filled with talk of anger, acceptance, and forgiveness, provided little to explain it. But the chance discovery of articles about the ritual of the "happy death" in religious magazines from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought Fanestil the answers he sought.

Mrs. Hunter's Happy Death blends the captivating historical accounts Fanestil uncovered with his own pastoral experiences to reveal the secrets that enable people to transcend pain and suffering and embrace death as a completion of life, not as a tragic end. A fascinating introduction to a historic approach to death and its contemporary incarnations, Mrs. Hunter's Happy Death also offers specific lessons on living and dying, from the "exercise of prayer" to the "labor of love" to "bearing testimony."

With the spread of in-home medical and hospice care, death is once again being embraced as a natural part of life, infused with profound emotional and spiritual dimensions. The inspiring stories in Mrs. Hunter's Happy Death beautifully demonstrate that the way we die, like the way we live, makes a supreme difference — in our lives and in the lives of others.

John Fanestil, a native of San Diego, is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Oxford University — where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar — and the Claremont School of Theology. Since 1992 he has worked as a pastor at United Methodist churches in Southern California..

	Home \| Forum \| Search
Health Parenting Personal Growth Relationships Religion & Spirituality Career & Money