The book, Dying Beautifully, and the performance piece, The Widow Wears Red Pajamas,
will liberate you from fear of death and inspire your creative spirit.
Opening of "The Widow Wears Red Pajamas" from Billie Best on Vimeo. November 17, 2009 performance at the Berkshire Museum Theater, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
...And how his wife learned to cope
The Widow Wears Red Pajamas is a one-hour monologue based on the book Dying Beautifully. In her performance of the anecdotes and poems in the book, author Billie Best shines a bright light on the emotional, mental, and physical process of coping with death, and explains from her personal experience how death is transformational for both the dearly departed and those left to live on. In the end, reflecting on her 32-year relationship with her husband, she contemplates her own death, and shares her plans for her death celebration with the audience. In doing so she challenges each of us to liberate ourselves from fear and approach our own death with the same open minded, creative spirit that inspired her husband.
Her story reveals what it's like to plan one's own death and then cope with unexpected events as the plan unfolds. Family photographs put the couple in context, illustrating a beautiful life, a hospice setting, dying at home, a home funeral, a ceremonious cremation, and a consciously green death. Poignant, romantic, and occasionally quite funny, The Widow Wears Red Pajamas delivers mind-bending catharsis by getting us to think of our own death as though we were planning our last party.
