Final Negotiations
A Story of Love, Loss, and Chronic Illness
Revised and Expanded

PB: $37.95
EAN: 978-1-4399-1716-9
Publication: Oct 18
HC: $104.50
EAN: 978-1-4399-1715-2
Publication: Oct 18
Ebook: $37.95
EAN: 978-1-4399-1717-6
Publication: Oct 18
416 pages
6 x 9
A poignant autoethnography that reflects back forty years on loving someone chronically ill
Read the Preface to the Revised & Expanded Edition (pdf).Description
Praise for the Previous Edition
“This is a remarkably revealing portrait of a couple dealing with a debilitating chronic illness.”
—Kirkus Reviews
In this revised and expanded edition of Final Negotiations—a personal account of caring for her partner, Gene Weinstein, and then coping with losing him to chronic emphysema—Ellis reflects back on her experiences as a caregiver, focusing on identity, vulnerability, emotions, and the aging process of an engaged academic. Now, decades later, she reconsiders who she was then, and how she has continued to be affected both by these events and by writing about them. She contemplates how she might act, think, and feel if she were going through the caregiving process again, now.
Taking an autoethnographic perspective, Ellis focuses on her feeling and thinking self in relationships, narrating particular lived experiences that offer a gateway into understanding interpersonal and cultural life. In her new epilogue, “From New Endings to New Beginnings,” Ellis describes her changed identity and how Final Negotiations informs her life and her understanding of how she and her current partner grow older together. She hopes her book provides companionship and comfort to readers who also will suffer loss in their lives.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface to the Revised and Expanded Edition
Acknowledgments for the Revised and Expanded Edition
Acknowledgments from the Original Edition
PART I • BEGINNING
PART II • NEGOTIATING ATTACHMENT
PART III • NEGOTIATING STABILITY AND CHANGE
PART IV • NEGOTIATING LOSS
PART V • NEGOTIATING THE STORY
PART VI • ENDINGS
PART VII • EPILOGUE: FROM NEW ENDINGS TO NEW BEGINNINGS
References
Index