Pinky Agnew

"Being a lifelong poetry reader, I know there are many more published poems about death than any other subject."

"As I’ve collected the poems, prose pieces and quotes for This is Farewell, I’ve come to understand how they help us to articulate the unspeakable, unthinkable reality. The death of a loved person. Our own inevitable death."

"We know we are going to die. We know that every person now alive will one day die. It is one of the great paradoxes of being human, that, armed with this awareness of our own mortality, we continue to behave as it will not happen."

"Mother Suzanne Aubert, founder of the Sisters of Compassion, gives us comfort in her practical wisdom: “Following the miracle of our birth, the only sure thing is our death when our life is complete. Though awesome, it is not to be unduly feared… We do not fall suddenly into death, we advance towards it step by step every day. Our last hour is not death by itself but it consummates it."