Maggie Callanan

Final Gifts, written with fellow hospice nurse Patricia Kelley and first published in 1992, gave a name to something both women kept meeting at the bedside. They called it Nearing Death Awareness: the way dying people speak in symbol and metaphor about travel, about needing to leave, about seeing those already gone. Callanan began hospice nursing in 1981 and reckons she has sat with more than two thousand dying people and their families, mostly around Washington DC. Kelley had been in hospice since 1978 and later ran clinical services at Montgomery Hospice in Maryland. The book's argument is that this talk is not confusion to be corrected but a message to be heard, and much of it is practical guidance for relatives on how to answer. Callanan was named Hospice Clinician of the Year in 1995, lectures to clinical and lay audiences, and followed the book in 2008 with Final Journeys, a guide to comfort care at home.