In 2020, Dr. Patel published a book on dying well titled “Between Life and Death.” It’s framed as a series of his conversations with a former patient, Harry Falls. Harry wanted to understand death better, so Dr. Patel narrated five patient stories, drawing the threads together to help Harry face the inevitable. Dr. Patel now uses a similar approach to train clinicians on having meaningful end-of-life conversations with patients.
Dr. Kashyap Patel's book, published in 2020.
Courtesy Dr. Kashyap Patel
Q: Why did you feel the need to write a book about dying?
A: The more I’ve witnessed, the more I’m convinced that there are things that we don’t know about this process, which needs to be explored much more. However, I do feel that there’s a power within all of us to steer the process of leaving this world.
Before I sat down with Harry, I loved to counsel patients, but I didn’t have any structural ideas. It was Harry himself who told me that I now had a simple way to explain dying to a much larger audience.
Q: What is your secret for fitting everything into your life?
A: I’ll tell you, it’s very simple. If I put my soul, heart, mind, actions, and language on the one plane and don’t let my brain and conditioning influence my choices, then I live in the moment. Whenever I let my conditioned mind take all the decisions, those are crooked, because you know, we’re selfish creatures – we can use what we call the convenient lie to hide inconvenient truth. And I try not to do that. I mean, it’s been a journey. It didn’t come overnight. I learned. And I feel that over all these years, the only thing that rewarded me, that opened the door of where I am today, was pure, selfless process, whether it’s the act of talking, speaking, or doing.
