Jeffry Hendrix, the son of a Midwestern, evangelical pastor, served a twenty-year stint as an ordained Protestant pastor. After converting to the Catholic Church, he has taught middle school at Saint Charles Borromeo School as homeroom teacher and catechist for nearly a decade.
A runner and weight-trainer, he began experiencing troubling symptoms and was told by his urologist that he had kidney cancer. Following the removal of a kidney and ureter, and just prior to starting chemotherapy for recurrence of lesions, he felt compelled to write A Little Guide for Your Last Days.
"It was as much for me as for anyone else who is facing membership in the Pre-Death Club," Hendrix says. "It has the feel of an AA group for the predeath, sin-recovery sort: hard-living folks, suddenly seen the light, give me the quick and dirty (if you can, pretty boy). My retort is to say, 'I'm right there with you, I won't waste your time. I'll give it to you as things are shutting down, and I won't leave. Promise.'
" A Little Guide for Your Last Days is a ray of faith and hope and charity for the time when the doctor has shrugged his/her shoulders. All that can be done has been done. But you aren't alone. Not by a long shot. This book will help you see that you that, and be glad. "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 Questions. 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
"Jeffry 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
"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. And 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