Dying to Teach

Book excerpt: In Dying to Teach, Jeffrey Berman confronts the most wrenching loss imaginable: the death of his beloved wife, Barbara. Through four interrelated narratives—how Barbara wrote about her illness in a cancer diary, how he cared for her throughout her illness, how his students reacted to his disclosure that she was dying, and how he responded to her death—Berman explores his efforts to hold on to Barbara precisely as she was letting go of life. Intensely personal, Dying to Teach affirms the power of writing to memorialize loss and work through grief, and demonstrates the importance of death education: teachers and students writing and talking about a subject that, until now, has often been deemed too personal for the classroom.