The only certainty in life is death. Why then is the subject of mortality taboo in our society? There are books about how to respond to the deaths of others and what may happen to our souls after we perish, but very few address the hardest fact of death— that each of us is mortal, and we each must eventually confront our own ending.

Following the deaths of his parents, Keith McWalter was forced to face his own mortality—a reality that he, like most of us, had managed to ignore. He launched the blog Mortal Coil, where he writes nonfiction and opinion pieces on a variety of subjects including politics, personal relationships, and modern medicine.

Befriending Ending and Other Essays contains many of the best essays from Mortal Coil; a thought-provoking compilation that combines strong emotions and lighthearted humor in a candid nonfiction style.

The lead essay, “Befriending Ending,” is the unforgettable story of the death of a parent, and a provocative exploration of our collective denial of death. The collection ranges far beyond the opening subject, and readers will find pieces both serious and comic on a wide range of topics, from the national debt to how you too can travel like a slob.