So often, the thought of death evokes our worst fears. We anticipate the opposite of anything we call living. Yet, something different happens when we invite death into the conversation. It enters a panoply of experience that includes gratitude, love, joy and wonder. Death reveals these gifts as often as tragedy and pain.

By the bedside of the dying, we learn an intimacy that includes the entirety of the human experience. We open rather than fight or run. We gaze into the eyes of death to ask what shines through all the brokenness. What remains?

Amita Lhamo uses her luminous stories to reveal the power of simple human kindness and the profundity of being.

Within such places, souls peek through the soft spaces of broken hearts like dandelions blooming in the cracks of sidewalks. No matter which way we turn, we find one garden, one ground—we discover the wonder of any heart.

"Accompanying her on these end-of-life journeys, we find unexpected moments of joy. We feel a little less afraid of our own deaths as well." – From the Foreward by Chagdud Khadro