Unfolding Finitudes:
Current Ethnographies of Aging,
Dying and End-of-Life Care

About the book God’s Waiting Room Racial Reckoning at Life’s End

Can older racists change their tune, or will they haunt us further once they’re gone? Rich in mystery and life’s lessons, God’s Waiting Room considers what matters in the end for older white adults and the younger Black nurses who care for them. An innovation in creative nonfiction, Casey Golomski’s story of his years of immersive research at a nursing home in South Africa, thirty years after the end of apartheid, is narrated as a one-day, room-by-room tour. The story is told in breathtakingly intimate and witty conversations with the home’s residents and nurses, including the untold story of Nelson Mandela’s Robben Island prison nurse, and readers learn how ageism, sexism, and racism intersect and impact health care both in South Africa and in the United States, as well as create conditions in which people primed to be enemies find grace despite the odds.

About the author Casey Golomski

Casey Golomski is an award-winning creative writer and cultural and medical anthropologist. His research centers perennial questions about life, death, and their thresholds, asking how people work through and memorialize critical events in their lives and communities. Aside from authoring many academic and literary publications, Golomski’s been interviewed for and cited by media outlets such as the New York Times, New Hampshire Public Radio, New Hampshire Magazine, AlexNews, Times of eSwatini, and Business Times.