I'm looking for books that approach these themes with a wise, erudite, and soul-stirring insight, away from the typical (albeit understandable) melodrama wrapping up the typical books you'd find addressing this part of life. Poetry is welcomed as well, as are medical books advising their readers on how to make better use of their healthy years.
See I've been working at a hospital for a while, surrounded by sickness, suffering, and death on a daily basis, but I've been rather unfazed by it all. Too wrapped up in my own personal micro-myths and other pieces of business, shutting out that world as just another spoke on the wheel of life. But it shouldn't be that way. Death is a major event, a soul leaving its vessel, exiting this realm for good. It should, at the very least, get me questioning the way i've been living. Don't want to exit this whole thing with a cold, detached heart.
I mostly struggle with understanding how people manage to adapt to their painful conditions after having spent a long time in fine health. I had some respiratory issues recently, and instead of worrying about its causes or its treatment, I was more focused on the possibility of ''losing'' a part of me forever, paranoid about sealing a portion of my time on earth as an irrecuperable waste of gifts, and dreading the idea of being in constant discomfort. These are all very normal parts of living, and I'd like to reduce how neurotic I get about them, due to my sheltered upbringing.
Sorry for blogposting, I just don't have anywhere else to go with these thoughts.

>But it shouldn't be that way.
Why not? Its easy to get used to new situations.

Also if anybody has any useful books on nursing and caretaking, I would greatly appreciate that as well. I am no nurse, but at some point in my life I will have to be there for my loved ones' painful moments, and I'd like to be as ready as I can be for that moment. I'd ask my co-workers, but they don't seem to be very competent, nor do they seem to care much about this, unfortunately. An all too common issue in the medical field.

>>24568619 (OP)
Maybe Death of Ivan Ilyich?

>>24568624
It's reductive and self-absorbed

>>24568619 (OP)
>Death is a major event, a soul leaving its vessel, exiting this realm for good.
Interesting. I take it you're not a monist, then?

>>24568619 (OP)
>Don't want to exit this whole thing with a cold, detached heart.
That's the best attitude. You're retarded for thinking otherwise. I don't understand how people can watch Palms, that misery porn of worst sort.

It's important to develop a sense of contempt and hatred of illness and old age

>>24568619 (OP)
>a soul leaving its vessel
you actually have no soul and your consciousness isn't going anywhere, it just turns off

haven't read it myself but maybe check out huysmans's saint lydwine of schiedam.

>>24568619 (OP)
Generative Energy: Restoring the Wholeness of Life by Dr. Ray Peat

>>24568619 (OP)
Two for you
>Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther
After my grandmother died, my dad gave me this book. It is a memoir from the 40s. Gunther wrote this book about his teenage son who died from a brain tumor. His son, Johnny, was a brilliant kid. Just thinking about it still stirs something in me.

>Mindfully Facing Disease and Death: Compassionate Advice from Early Buddhist Texts by Bhikkhu Analayo
When my grandfather was killed, I was still in undergrad doing my bachelor's in religious studies. This book goes over all sorts of things addressed in the Pali literature, including viewing the Buddha as a doctor, meditations to do when you're ill, ways to manage pain with mindfulness, what to learn from patients, ways to deal with grief, instructions for the deathbed, advice for the terminally ill, meditative advice for the actively dying, deaths of both lay disciples and the Buddha himself, as well as instructions on maranasati (mindfulness of death).

>>24569018
>t. Dennett the Faggett

>>24569200
>>Death Be Not Proud
I was in middle school when they made us read this, and I will always remember the homo episode in that book. It was probably my first exposure to homosexuality and made me a homo.

>>24568993
how korean of you

>>24569018
Yes, you're jewish, we get it.

>>24568619 (OP)
I don't really have any thoughts on literature except maybe reading Ecclesiastes.

My wife had cancer 3 times and survived. You come out of the experience bewildered and with more questions than answers. I work with chronically ill people as well and I get the feeling many of them have not learned any sort of sage wisdom about aging and illness either. I think the best thing you can do in this regard is to love your youth and to not take your capable body for granted, but also to age gracefully so that your eventual breakdown doesn't come as a surprise, but something you had been planning for.

>>24571705
May God keep his light shining down on you and your family, anon. Thank you for the insight.

Hugo Williams - Lines Off deals with his kidney failure and dialysis in a thoughtful and amusing way, no self pity.

>>24568619 (OP)
Tibetan book of living and dying

>>24568619 (OP)
The Magic Mountain

>>24568619 (OP)
my diary desu

>>24568619 (OP)
The writing called Axiochus by a pseudo-Plato might be of interest to you. In it, Socrates 'consoles' (in his own Socratic way) a man who is about to die.

>>24575769
-And he compares different philosophies (such as Epicureanism)'s outlooks on the subject.