Travels with Charlie, Not the Dog

The book addresses the fact that death is inescapable. Death like most losses forms a natural part of life. This book sets a tone characterizing the idea that mortality can teach us a lot about life if we allow it. This book is written to speak into a culture and engages a culture – indeed humanity in a re-creative and refashioning way. It addresses the tendency in humans to walk away from issues of disintegration, illness, caregiving, dying, and grief. It attempts to resettle the idea of perceiving death as a puzzle to be solved and ignored. The book proposes that death is a natural phenomenon and is inevitable. Birth and death form incredible moments in the human’s pilgrimage toward his or her creator.  Humanity has always lived in this paradox of being born and dying. These moments are revelatory of the meaning of life.

The author reiterates that death is a transition to a life that has not yet been imagined. The death subsumes shocks and surprises human beings even in their lives of self-actualization and independence. In fact, the author observes that death truncates humanity’s effort in idolizing power, wealth, fame and tendency to appear invincible. Alluding to the Hebrew Scriptures in the Book of Ecclesiastes, the author painted it clearly that even in the face of medical advancement and prowess of modern science, the reality that each of us will die at his or her own time has not changed.  Even the most advantaged person is bound to hit his or her limit, for death is bound to come. Thus, the author noted that death as well as life needs to be faced with relentlessness as survivors’ grief. Survivors have to be given opportunity to grieve unhindered, recognizing that grief is a journey that can be exhausting and that grief will rock us until is done with us and it will be done! With this realization, the author in a renewed tone declares that that “death is not a god.” It is in this re-creative sense that humanity can find meaning beyond death.