Dying With Dad: Tough Talks for Easier Endings

Yvonne Caputo is no stranger to death. Before she was thirty, she could list seventeen family members and friends who had passed away. Among them were her uncle Claude and his son Jimmy, both dead by suicide; her cousin Alan, murdered in Central Park; and her brother Mark, killed in a car accident. Each of these deaths left her with questions, the most important of which was: Why don't we talk about the end of life before the end of life?

Yvonne Caputo's first book, Flying with Dad, was about her father's experiences in World War II. But this wasn't what readers focused their questions on. Instead, they asked her about how she and her dad talked about how he envisioned his end-of-life experiences, how she walked him through his Five Wishes document and how, when the day came, she stopped the paramedics from reviving him.

In Dying with Dad, Yvonne shares the joy she felt when her father died on his terms. And the reason she knew what those terms were was because they had a heart-to-heart conversation about it before it was too late.

Working in a retirement facility, Yvonne saw what happens when we wait until when Dad is dying or when Mom is dying to talk about what the dying desire. While a living will and trust take care of the legalities involved in how we want to live our final days and how we want to die, an end-of-life conversation should go beyond medical treatment and estate planning. We need to talk about the emotional and the spiritual too.

Yvonne's final journey with her dad helps spark one of the most difficult but most important conversations we can have with our loved ones.

ISBN-13: 9781990688065

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Ingenium Books

Publication Date: 07-29-2022

Pages: 174

Product Dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.56(d)

Yvonne Caputo is passionate about inspiring meaningful conversations, personally and professionally. She's author of Flying with Dad and Dying with Dad, a professional speaker, psychotherapist, and corporate trainer. Yvonne Caputo has also been a teacher, the head of human resources in a retirement community, and a consultant. She has master's degrees in education and in clinical psychology. The conversations that matter most aren't one-sided, especially those she had with her dad. They are the ones that taught her to meet him where he was, instead of where she wanted him to be. The result was an intimacy, a deep abiding respect, and a no-regrets final goodbye. Her first book, Flying with Dad, is about her relationship with her father through his telling of World War II stories. Dying with Dad, Yvonne's second book, shares how meaningful conversations around end-of-life matters, which are often difficult conversations many of us dread and avoid. Conversations matter. And meaningful conversations are gifts that can stimulate and renew relationships, reveal people's deepest desires, and restore connections between and within them. Yvonne lives in Pennsylvania with her best friend (who is also her husband). Together they have three children and three grandchildren.