“What we’ve forgotten about caring for our afflicted and our dead, Orso reminds us. This is not just a book about losing a loved one to the vanishing disease of Alzheimer’s or the healing powers of home funerals. It’s an anthem to a love of place and people through all the momentous and interstitial moments of a devastating illness, a family in grief, a community of healing, and how the old ways, the knowing ways, led them home.”

—Lee Webster, former president, Green Burial Council International

“It can happen around death that we step off to the side of ordinary time. We’re undone in a way that is wholly fitting. There’s work that gets done, over there, in that other time: culture work, the kind that reaches beyond the circle of those gathered in mourning. This book is a gift brought back from such a time of undoing: a small book, but large in its generosity and in the weight of what it has to tell us. May it be part of a spreading rumor: that we still carry in our bodies the memory of how to begin again, to carry that weight, to take up the work of culture with those around us, even this late in the day.”

—Dougald Hine, author of At Work in the Ruins

“Death is the ultimate personal act. No one can share it with us. But as human beings, it is our responsibility to ease this most difficult passage for our loved ones the best that we can, and to care for the person, the image of God, with love and compassion after they die. This book is a meditation on that process, of life and death, love and burial, done as beautifully as it can be done. It is well worth reading, and it can be a model for anyone, Christian or not, who is interested in reclaiming, from the industrial machine, the basic human act of care for our loved ones after they die. The physical process is so simple—if you’ve ever washed a baby, you can do it—but the power and spiritual benefits of this simple act are enormous.”

—Mark Barna, author of A Christian Ending: A Handbook for Burial in the Ancient Christian Tradition