Description
A Mother’s Final Gift – Audio Book
Since our family wrote the book, each of us narrated our parts.
A 5 hour inspiring story of Joyce’s mother, Louise, embarking
upon the journey of a lifetime, this is really a book all about living life to the fullest.
$15 download to your computer, iPod, smartphone, or burn to CD’s.
PayPal gives you a choice to use any major credit card.
Every human being on our planet shares two momentous occasions: birth and death. In preparing for birth, there are great festivities, gifts are given, baby showers are planned and carried out, baptisms, brisos, and other religious rites are festively marked, nurseries are painted, cribs are built, booties are knitted, and the whole process is generally celebrated for nine months.
But death! Death is often another story. Most of us do not want to think about it – either about our own deaths, or the deaths of our loved ones. Death is the penultimate experience that will happen to all of us, and to everybody we know, but many of us become ostriches with our heads in the sand when faced with thinking about it. We often just ignore dealing with it.
This beautiful, touching book changed all of that for me. I had actually put off reading it because my own mother is ninety years old and not well. So at first, I was loath to read what I knew would be an emotionally-charged chronicle of another mother’s death. But I did read it, and I feel exceedingly enriched and enlightened by having done so.
A Mother’s Final Gift is the story of one courageous woman – Louise Viola Swanson Wollenberg – and of her tremendous love of life and family, and her faith and resolve. But it is also the story of her equally courageous family who, in the process of rising to the occasion and carrying out Louise’s long-held final wishes, not only overcame so many stigmas about the process of death but, at the same time, rediscovered what it means to celebrate life itself.
This book not only touches the heart in a very powerful, poignant, and joyful way, but reading it was life-changing for me. In writing this book, Joyce and Barry Vissell, and their children, mentor us through an experience that many of us were afraid to even think about it. Louise looked at death as her greatest adventure. So should we all. The title of this book is indeed A Mother’s Final Gift but, in truth, this story is an exceptional gift to every person who will read it.
Emmy Award-winning producer,
director, and conductor
What people say about A Mother’s Final Gift:
“This book is moving, uplifting, and ennobling. While the topic is a daunting one, it’s handled with such sensitivity and insight – and, yes, love – that you are forced to reexamine your fears about death and dying… and dispense with them.”
– John Gray, Executive Producer, Creator, Director: CBS-TV “The Ghost Whisperer”
“A rare and touching account! If you would like to deepen your connection with your family, especially during the time of a passing of a loved one, this book will give you courage, inspiration, and a higher vision that will soothe your soul and help you navigate transition. It’s a magnificent testament to love and the power of family to navigate transition.”
– Alan Cohen, author of Linden’s Last Life.
“The Vissell family has written a beautiful and moving account of their mother’s (and grandmother’s) death. Despite her challenges, Louise Wollenberg lived her dying as a celebration of life. Her open and courageous heart became a portal to the other side, and her presence became a place of healing. This book will comfort and inspire.”
–Michael Kearney, MD, FRCPI, Medical Director of the Palliative Care Service at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital and Associate Medical Director at Visiting Nurse and Hospice Care.
“This is a goose bump book, a 10 hankie page-turner and a real primer for a loving, dying experience. Anyone who is caring for a loved one in the last stages of life or wanting to better understand conscious dying will gain comfort and insight from its pages.”
– Caroline Sutherland, author of The Body Knows
Watch a video about A Mother’s Final Gift