The Living In Her Dying

Hannah, an old old Jewish woman is about to die. But not so fast! Sara, her not-so-young daughter isn’t ready to let her go. Not while there’s a heart pumping, breath flowing, mind working (mostly), corned beef left to eat. Determined to untangle the kinks in their long and complicated relationship, Sara invites us on a journey through the last months of Hannah’s life — from the dining room of LA’s Jewish Home to the Day Room of UCLA’s Geriatric Psych Ward; from despair to dark humor to release. A memoir of caregiving and advocacy, yes. But so passionate, so committed to dignity, the story of Hannah and Sara becomes a universal story of love: how we struggle to connect and, finally, to separate. In The Living In Her Dying,a mother and daughter come to know each other, and themselves, so the mother can die and the daughter can live. 

Inspired by Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, Will Schwalbe’s The End of Your Life Book Club, Karl Knausgaard’sMy Struggle, Sara Bragin commits in this, her first book, to discover what can happen when life’s most ordinary moments are honored and entrusted to the page.