The Way In: What a Hospice Chaplain Learned Living with Parkinson’s, in Poetry and Prose

In poetry and prose, a former hospice chaplain tells what he has learned from living with early-onset Parkinson’s disease. By turns wrenching, funny, and surprising, this part memoir, part poetry chapbook offers wisdom from several of the world’s spiritual traditions, which the author studied as an Interfaith minister.

The author’s work as a hospice chaplain brings insight and compassion into the fraught subjects of death and grief, and his transparency and self-disclosure make him real and relatable. Besides hospice chaplaincy, the author has worked as an actor, musician, Tarot reader, and college music professor, and all these experiences find their way into the book.

The poetry, almost entirely rhymed and metered, is suitable for a general audience, requiring no specialized training or wealth of reading to make it accessible and effective for readers.