Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

I read this book about a month after my father died at the age of 90, but I wish I had read it several years ago so I could have considered having the type of conversation Gawande recommends with those facing end of life decisions - what is important to you, and what do you want preserved (ability to eat, see friends, read the daily paper) at all costs? His belief that we need to let individuals be the “authors of their own stories” as much as possible is so simple and yet antithetical to much of modern medicine.

Being Mortal is a brief book but it isn't a fast read because it is so gut-wrenching and heartbreaking. The chapters describing his father's decline and death were especially devastating for me given my own loss. Yet I'm so, so glad I read it.

I would recommend this book to anyone with aging parents, or really to anyone at all because you never know when you or your loved ones will be faced with these end of life decisions.