Content Warning: This section references death and dying, including by suicide.

Vlahos states in the Introduction that one of the book’s goals is to answer questions about death that most people are too afraid to ask. As a hospice nurse and a human being who has experienced loss, she has a perspective on both the medical and emotional aspects of death. However, Vlahos’s openness about these issues rarely entails definitive claims; through her stories, she reveals that while she looked for concrete answers about death in the past, she has since found comfort in its mystery.

Vlahos suggests that society is reluctant to discuss death frankly even in contexts where it is directly relevant. In the Introduction, for example, Vlahos seeks religious explanations of death and suffering, but her mother simply tells her to stop asking. Even as a hospice nurse, she faces silence and a lack of basic information. Consequently, she is unprepared when she first sees a patient apparently interacting with a deceased loved one. Vlahos asks another nurse about this, who casually answers, “Yeah, it happens all the time” (16). The response suggests that the phenomenon is so obvious and commonplace that it hardly needs mentioning, and Vlahos’s experiences bear that out.