I hope that some of the 50 lessons in this book help you navigate the adventure and become a compassionate, crazy-good caregiver, one of the most courageous jobs you never wanted. Helping someone die can be one of life’s greatest adventures. So while this is about dying, it’s also about possibilities.Īn adventure is defined as an experience that can be both terrifying and inspiring because you enter into a flow that is like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. You can find superpowers that you never knew you had. A lot of people have said, Why write about something so depressing? The answer is that helping someone during their final months can be inspiring and rewarding in ways that you never thought possible. Thank you for helping us remember my husband’s final days not with agony and heart break but as his caregiver, the ‘most courageous, inspiring and rewarding job I never wanted.’īe The Noodle is a caregiver’s adventure guide, based on my wild, wondrous and life changing journey helping my mother die at home. 'But when Kelly read Be the Noodle and told me about it, it allowed me to share with her the most agonizing, poignant, intimate, and life-changing experience of our lives. My husband and I did not want those memories to be our children’s last memoires of their father. Then her mother called and said, Come home.Ī few months later Kelli’s mother wrote, 'I had no intention of sharing with Kelli or her brother the last 15 days when the dying had begun. She read Be the Noodle and sent it to her mother. She was at school, away from her parents, sick with worry and grief. My niece gave the book to a friend at college whose father was dying. One of my favorite stories came from a family in Alabama. I am also grateful that people have been kind enough to tell me how the book affected their lives. I am so humbled and joyful knowing that this little book has done just that for many. To make a sad part of life, a treasured part of life. I wanted to share my experience helping my mother die so that people might find the courage, love and sick humor to be fully present with the person they love. Six years ago I published this book because I wanted people helping a loved one die to know that they’re not alone. Kelly Updated Introduction: Caregivers Need An Adventure Guide

Be the Noddle by Lois Kelly