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Working as a hospice chaplain, Kerry Egan quickly learned her job was more about listening than talking.

She was prepared to talk about God, but she found the dying rarely wanted that. She found that cliche messages of support never landed.

Just like this one: "God never gives you more than you can handle."

"That's not true," Egan told MPR News host Kerri Miller. "Some people have more than they can handle."

In her new book, "On Living," Egan shares what she learned sitting at the bedsides of dying patients. She describes the "spiritual working of dying" — how people found peace in their own life stories.

But what she learned the most about was living: what had made people proud or content or even guilty. Their stories transformed her as she listened, and she shares those insights in "On Living."

For the full interview with Kerry Egan on "On Living," use the audio player above.

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Kerry Egan has sat at the bedside of many patients at the end of their lives, and she shares what she's learned in her new book, "On Living."

In "On Living," hospice chaplin Kerry Egan shares tales of patients with whom she worked and what she learned about life while counseling the terminally ill.

A hospice chaplain shares what dying taught her about living

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