One Last Thing: How to live with the end in mind

WATERSTONES' BEST BOOKS OF 2023: BIOGRAPHY The last book from bestselling author and advocate Wendy Mitchell ‘This beautiful book will give hope and courage to many people. An uplifting and courageous read’ KATHRYN MANNIX 'Anyone who reads Mitchell’s work can only admire her passion, her energy and her extraordinary courage' SUNDAY TIMES Wendy Mitchell doesn’t fear anything anymore. After her diagnosis of young-onset dementia in 2014, all of Wendy's old fears - the dark, animals - melted away. What more was there to be afraid of when she faced her worst fear: losing her own mind? While living with her diagnosis and facing the extreme changes that come along with a progressive terminal illness, Wendy wrote two Sunday Times-bestselling books, went skydiving for the first time and supports multiple dementia advocacy groups in the UK. She is known for talking about living with dementia, but now – while she is still able to – she explores dying with it. In One Last Thing, Wendy embarks on a journey to explore all angles of death: how we can prepare for it, how we talk about it with our loved ones and how we can be empowered to make our own choices. With conversations on the topic of assisted dying, from those who are fighting to make it legal to those vehemently opposed to its practice, Wendy reminds us that to get on with the business of living, we need to talk about death.

About the Author :
Wendy Mitchell spent twenty years as a non-clinical team leader in the NHS before being diagnosed with young-onset dementia in July 2014 at the age of fifty-eight. Shocked by the lack of awareness about the disease, both in the community and in hospitals, she vowed to spend her time raising awareness about dementia and encouraging others to see that there is life after a diagnosis. In 2019 she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Health by the University of Bradford for her contribution to research. She has two daughters and lives in Yorkshire.

Review :
Very compelling . . . A really thoughtful and thorough exploration of end-of-life concerns – shared, I know, by many people with dementia diagnoses and their families. Strong and clear about your own values, you recognise and support others' choices too. One Last Thing is wonderful .... [Wendy,] thank you for writing it, thank you for listening to so many voices and for unpicking the threads to find the details that you needed to know. Thank you for thinking aloud, for 'showing your working out,' so others can follow you along the winding road into the future . . . your book will give hope and courage to many people, because as we both know when we speak about dying we always find ourselves reflecting on living. This beautiful book is an uplifting and courageous read, and I am incredibly proud to know you. As wise and wonderful as you might imagine, having the vital conversation about death – hers & ours, in her final book. Don't duck this one: you will be glad you joined her. Anyone who reads Mitchell’s work can only admire her passion, her energy and her extraordinary courage. She is absolutely right that we need to talk more about death. She is right that we need to plan for it [An] urgent, humane manifesto on how to care for and about those edging towards the finality of death Remarkable . . . One Last Thing is packed with useful thoughts and advice on how we might best plan for the end . . . I hope that doesn’t sound depressing or morbid, because this book is anything but One Last Thing, stares death in the face, but it’s also a clarion cry to enjoy the time you have left An uplifting memoir that reminds us we should relish every moment A journey exploring all angles of death Powerful One Last Thing – the best and most useful book I have read this year – is about how to die with dementia, a subject doctors tend not to address. She does not want to ‘slip over the edge’, she explains, and spend her last years inside a black hole . . . One Last Thing is an argument for assisted dying and also, invaluably, a guide to the paperwork and acronyms involved, including ACP, ReSPECT, LPA and DNACPR forms. It is curious, Mitchell notes, how little value we place on a good death when the death rate among us is 100 per cent