On Death, Dying and Not Dying

This is a searing and profound account of Peter Houghton's nearing death experience and his subsequent re-emergence as a result of taking part in a clinical trial for a new treatment for cardiomyopathy. It is all the more poignant in combining the author's own experience with his counselling work of the dying. He begins with his own story before going on to describe the physical process of dying, the last days, and how people feel about death and dying. He is agnostic about the possibility of survival of consciousness - he has no answers to the difficult questions but 'All the experiences of life, including suffering and its relief, compassion and pity, are there to be embraced. To me life is something to be celebrated and death something to be endured as part of the universal experience of entropy'.