Gifts of Passing

Author: Manca Košir

Manca Košir in the book Gifts of Passing continues the series of epistles with a book of correspondence about "last words": passing, dying, small and great deaths. The correspondents, sincere witnesses, that sometimes the heart weeps, write about their pains and suffering, about the dark hours of the spirit and the boundless joys of existence. Despite the severe (suicidal thoughts, embrace of death, cancer diagnosis, giving birth to a stillborn child), all the letters shine with a light of hope and trust.

Contributors: Ksenija Malia Leban, Janko Bohak, Urška Lunder, Karel Gržan, Jasna Stošić, Ana Drevenšek, and Tina Košir Mazi.

Manca Košir (1948), ambassador of joyful aging and hospice volunteer, earned her doctorate at the Faculty of Arts in Zagreb. In 1970, she began publishing in Mladina, continuing her professional journalism career at TT, ITD, and Teleks, and on TV Slovenia, she hosted the shows Moški, ženske and Čas za Manco Košir. For promoting reading culture, she received the award from the City of Ljubljana in 2016 and a special recognition at the 33rd Slovenian Book Fair in 2017. From 1980 until her retirement in 2005, she was a professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences. She is the author of twenty-one books.

"The theme of the transience of human life has shifted for me from the intellectual to the existential. Now it is serious!" - Janko Bohak

"Perhaps this is the whole meaning of life: gathering experience, inner strength, to remain calm, peaceful, and loving when the change of all changes comes, when we transform from here to everywhere." - Urška Lunder

"When I thought I would be overwhelmed, I immensely longed for human closeness – someone to feel beside me." - Karel Gržan

"In me lives a peaceful awareness that life never ends, it only transforms from one form to another." - Jasna Stošić