A Little Guide For Your Last Days

Hardbound, 108 Pages
Author: Jeffry Hendrix

 Since I was young, I have watched death come: for my grandparents; for a multitude of my church members; for my mother; for my brother; and then for me.

But I was not ready when I knew it was coming for me. I was scared to death the morning of the surgery to open me up to remove my left kidney, ureter, and scrape my bladder. I was not ready. I felt in an instant how much of my precious time on this Earth as a human being had been spent being distracted from the absolute and undeniable fact. I. Will. Die.

It was partly my fault – who wants to think about that? It was mostly the milieu in which I was born, lived, and moved through life: modern popular culture strives during our every waking moment to keep our consciousness from the fact of our mortality. We are distracted to death. Sure: it fills with near-pornographic glee the movies, television dramas, comedies, thrillers, gore fests with other peoples’ deaths, but never does it put death in first person singular.

So at 10:30 a.m. on the morning of April 24, 2008, I had my personal Garden of Gethsemane. I was alone (literally). I was mortally afraid. I was not ready or at peace with the fact that I was moving toward my death, and death was moving toward me.


The surgery was successful, but in December of the same year, cystoscopy showed I had lesions in my bladder, and chemotherapy was prescribed. It was at moment that A Little Guide for Your Last Days began to be written. As much for me as for anyone else who might read it.

For any readers who are Christian, Little Guide is my express understanding of the grace of God in Jesus Christ to save us from both the penalty of sin and the fear and pain of death. Yes; it is Catholic in theology and understanding. That is where I find the most truth, the most hope, the most understanding of our human condition, and the most answers to our human plight.

I want A Little Guide for Your Last Days to be not only a memento mori – a reminder of your mortality – but a book of lessons for living your life more in keeping with the will of our self-donating, covenant-making, covenant-keeping God. And He is most clearly revealed in Jesus Christ: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Deo gratias.
Jeffry Hendrix

What Others Have Said

As a cancer survivor, I wish I'd had Jeff Hendrix's Little Guide to help me through the fear and uncertainty following my initial diagnosis. Like a modern-day Virgil to the reader's Dante, he guides those facing illness so they may keep their eyes and feet turned towards Paradise.
- Dawn Eden, author, The Thrill of the Chaste

Jeff Hendrix is a wise guy--and a wise guide--whose Little Guide for Your Last Days helps us navigate the answers to the Really Big !uestions. Whether your death is imminent or you are living life on the deferred payment plan, sooner or later that Bill of Bills will come due. Hendrix helps you to be ready for that inevitability now.
-Mark P. Shea, author, Mary, Mother of the Son

This little volume punches beyond its size. It's as huge as the question it asks - and as important. It is a memento mori. A reminder of death. It asks us to escape from the four walls of the self to the selfless freedom of the contemplation of the Four Last Things: Death, Judgement, Hell, and Heaven. Paradoxically these Last Things are also the First Things. They are the first principles on which our lasting destiny, and our last destination, shall be decided. The first shall be last and the last shall be first ... We are Mortal. We will be Judged. And we will find our final resting place in either the Inferno or in Paradise. It's as simple and as scary as that!

Jeff Hendrix socks it to us like a Bible-thumping preacher, and yet does so with the sagacity of a latter day C.S. Lewis. Reading this little book is like going ten rounds with a pugilistic C.S. Lewis. It will knock you out and wake you up at the same time!
- Joseph Pearce, author, C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church

Jeffry Hendrix's little handbook on dying well is a singularly clear-headed and consoling presentation of a subject we all avoid talking about. Most people in this world are distracted from their last end. In particular, those whose end is very near are often tempted to run to false securities. Hendrix's succeeds in focusing his readers on the things that really matter and does so by promoting what is really true, good and beautiful. He brings them to the heart of Christ through the 'chivalrous Marian virtue' of saying 'yes' to God.
- Fr. Angelo Mary Geiger, Franciscan Friar of the Immaculate, author and speaker

Jeff Hendrix has written a pointed and poignant guide to dying well. Whether you have a terminal disease or not, you're going to face Mr Death. A Little Guide for Your Last Days is a moving, wise and witty way to prepare for the final adventure.
- Fr Dwight Longenecker, author, Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing

Death is not something one gets right on the first try, and most of us put off thinking about it until our negligence is rudely interrupted by an sobering conversation with our physician. Jeff Hendrix has had such conversations, and he has written a wonderfully readable and wise and witty little book about what to do when that happens. Jeff takes death seriously, but his seriousness is suffused with an effervescent faith. A book about death that has a chapter entitled "Don't Swing at Every Pitch" is a book we all need to read."
- Gil Bailie, author, Violence Unveiled - Humanity at the Crossroads