Author Discusses Steps To Plan 'A Good Death' For The Living

FORT COLLINS, CO -- Colorado novelist Laura Pritchett has authored five novels about ranch life on the Front Range (and one non-fiction book about bears) but the book she wrote for herself is her new "crash course in the art of dying," a look at facing, and even Making Friends with Death.

Fort Collins native Pritchett spoke at Old Firehouse Books Thursday to a hometown crowd, including State Rep. Jeni Arndt (D-Fort Collins) who helped pass assisted suicide legislation in Colorado in 2016.

Pritchett said she's been a "death nerd" since she was a teenager, when she helped her mother restore the Bingham Hill pioneer cemetery on the family ranch near the Cache La Poudre River. One graves being eaten away by erosion of the neighboring ditch, and Pritchett's family ended up with a pioneer skull, with matted ginger hair, in their family home for many years, she describes in the book.

In a talk that was not spooky or Halloweeny (except for the party favors handed out as quiz prizes) Pritchett gave tips about how thinking about your own mortal demise "makes living have more meaning."

After a medical scare in her thirties, Pritchett said she was searching for a handbook to plan a way to make peace with the inevitable. The book is her personal handbook based on the research she has done with medical experts, hospice workers and spiritual (primarily Buddhist) retreats.

She mentioned Pew Research statistics that 70 percent of Americans say they'd like to die at home, but 70 percent die in hospitals or long-term care facilities. Eighty percent of people say they want to write down their final wishes, but few actually do. Only seven percent have spoken to doctors or medical experts about their own end-of-life care, Pritchett said.

Pritchett's idea is to "use death as your adviser for ways to live your life," she said.

Others who spoke at the event included a hospice care worker and a man who had "cheated death" by living from infancy with cystic fibrosis and gone through two lung transplants and a kidney transplant.

"I've faced my mortality my whole life," said Brad Kennedy. "But I had an amazing set of parents who said, 'Every day is a new day, so wake up and you can either be miserable or you can be happy."

Watch the Firehouse Books Event Here:

Image Courtesy Laura Pritchett.