It’s a reflection on all the horrors of bodily illness, and the extremities of grief, even after — maybe especially after — de Beauvoir and her mother had experienced such a strain within their relationship, caused by her mother’s Catholic opposition to her atheism. The arthritis in her hips, which had first appeared after the war, had grown worse year by year, in spite of massage and cures at Aix-les-Bains; it took her an hour to make her way round one block of houses. Gordon believes that now — with Baby Boomers entering retirement, many losing their parents, and many more coming to grips with their own mortality — is the moment to talk through these issues as a culture, to discuss the process of death in specific terms, beyond the anecdotal and platitudinal. In depicting her mother’s refusal to ‘go gentle’ while her autonomy and dignity are taken from her, Simone de Beauvoir ‘shows the power of compassion when it is allied with acute intelligence’ ( Sunday Telegraph).

He was on hospice care and he chose to stop eating and drinking, and the wife had a lot of support, and hospice was really excellent and supportive of them. De Beauvoir’s experiences lead to a series of reflections on the nature of death in which she questions her earlier assumptions including her impressions about the death of the elderly, concluding that the value of any life is such that death is always a tragedy, and one too often accompanied by violence, drawing on Dylan Thomas it’s a cause for rage not submission.She may be young, but Gunnie Rose has acquired a fearsome reputation and the wizards are at a desperate crossroads, even if they won’t admit it. If a witness is a beneficiary (or the married partner or civil partner of a beneficiary), the will is still valid but the beneficiary will not be able to inherit under the will. The writing is eloquent and brutal, pulling no punches as she tells the detailed and terrifying truth of her mother's demise.

I thought: she has been knocked down by a car; she was climbing laboriously from the road to the pavement, leaning on her stick, and a car knocked her down. Powerful, touching and sometimes shocking, this is an end-of-life account that no reader is likely to forget. As she charts her last weeks and her abasement at the hands of doctors and illness, both hostility and unexpected love play themselves out on the page.Long considered one of Simone de Beauvoir’s masterpieces, A Very Easy Death is a profoundly affecting, day-by-day recounting of her mother’s final days after she is hospitalized following a fall.

In depicting her mother’s refusal to ‘go gentle’ while her autonomy and dignity are taken from her, Simone de Beauvoir ‘shows the power of compassion when it is allied with acute intelligence’ ( Sunday Telegraph ). Grube says that’s usually how it goes with these cases: within an hour or two, the person stops breathing and experiences “a peaceful, simple death. A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir is a poignant and powerful memoir that chronicles the final days of the author's mother. There had been a time, not very long ago, when she took pleasure in the thought that she did not look her age; now there could no longer be any mistake about it – she was a woman of seventy-seven, quite worn out. This memoir-essay is fluid and open, and with unflinching honesty describes a feeling and thought that many are often too afraid to say - especially when it comes to speak of a loved one post-death.You can also ask the company to contact solicitors in the area where the person lived to ask if they hold a will.