What Would You Say If You Could Write Your Own Obituary?

When end-of-life caregiver and grief counselor Christiane zu Salm wrote an obituary for herself as a requirement of her training, she realized how powerful it could be for people nearing death to talk about their lives in their own words.

Standard obituaries contain little beyond simple facts about the deceased person’s family, career, hobbies, and achievements. But they don’t tell us much about the person’s actual experience of life. How do regular people view their lives as they approach death? The patients zu Salm interviewed in their homes, nursing facilities, and hospices were eager for a chance to set the record straight and impart their final thoughts.

This collection presents obituaries gathered from people facing death in the U.S. before and during the global Covid-19 pandemic. It also includes the author’s own story of leaving a successful career as a media executive to do end-of-life work, as well as her reflections on what we can learn from the dying about making the most of our lives.

About Author:
Christiane zu Salm is an Emotional Health Counselor, author, speaker, creator, and the host of the podcast Before It’s Too Late. A former media executive for MTV Networks and IAC, she also served as a senior advisor to JP Morgan. Christiane is a trained end-of-life caretaker and certified professional IPEC coach. After a decade of hospice work, she now specializes in grief counseling. In her virtual practice, she teaches accomplished entrepreneurs who feel stuck, burned out, or empty inside how to grieve losses of any kind so they can reconnect to themselves, diminish their regrets, and find sustained meaning in their lives. She holds an MBA with distinction from Ludwig-­Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany, is an Eisenhower Fellow and was named Global Leader For Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum.