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This guide enthusiastically encourages readers to live positive, meaningful lives, redeem themselves, and turn a negative or challenging trajectory around. The narrative provides ample personal details from the author’s life to model how to create a positive life, a positive exit from life, and a legacy that leaves family members and friends in an emotionally secure state.
Harms explains the meaning of legacy in a casual, comfortable style, dividing her narrative into three parts representative of three types of legacies. Part 1 examines “affirmatory endowments”—how to create a living legacy by cultivating respect for education, a strong work ethic, and unconditional love for family and community. Part 2 explores death and dying, including the ever-fascinating phenomena of near-death experiences (NDEs). The focus of Part 3 is on the process of preparing for death by “getting one’s affairs in order,” with an emphasis on the practical aspects of preparing wills and letters of gratitude for loved ones. Each chapter ends with a helpful list of resources for further reading, and the final few chapters provide instructions and checklists to guide the reader through suggested tasks.
The thoughtful narrative rambles here and there in much the same way that a conversation with a trusted friend may diverge through various topics. Harms has a clever way of clarifying the points of her shared stories by always circling back around to the original theme. Some chapters are briefer and more to the point than others, but all move the reader toward the goal of understanding their life potential, how to express it authentically, and how to bring their lives to a close in a manner that makes death less feared and more manageable for themselves and their loved ones.
The author embraces Christian values, and though she peppers the narrative with the language of her faith, she encourages the reader to think with an open mind and adapt the narrative to their personal spiritual ideal. The universal approach is refreshing, as is the admonition to face end-of-life issues on practical terms, with an eye toward positive living and a positive exit when death comes knocking. Harms’ tales of her family’s joys and sorrows provide heartfelt, realistic, and even gritty examples of her familial struggles over generations with issues that led to mental or physical health crises and challenges in relationships. She is just as candid in describing the easygoing, happy times that both her departed and current family members have shared. Most important, Harms says, is to “express and model love, gratitude, and joy.”
The author also describes the inspiring stories of people that she has met along her life path, such as the Rwandan victims of the tragic genocide in the 1990s who forgave their tormentors and even joined with them to rebuild their country. Harms writes: “You start out with anger or resentment that resembles the characteristics of an ugly caterpillar always eating things up. Through the process of forgiveness, you change into a beautiful butterfly free of the earth and able to fly to the heavens.”
There is something for everyone in this book, so to speak, for all of us live and face death. Readers will discover topics that personally resonate with them because Harms’ candid love for her family and community also extends outward to include all who enter her narrative to borrow clues and cues for their own well-being.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review