This book is all about dying – learning about when it might happen, and seeing how that changes your perspective and priorities.
The author was a writer as well as a teacher, and having just retired after teaching for forty years he gets a terminal cancer diagnosis. This book is a way for him to process that, and also a way for other people to understand what he is going through and to learn from his experience.
I thought the information about how he felt and how he processed this abrupt change was useful. Like he said, nobody knows how they will react until it happens to them. But watching him go through stages, make mistakes, and then learn from them made it worth reading the book.
The book felt like it was a message to the family he was leaving behind, and sort of a capstone to his life and experiences. While this is admirable and certainly helpful to him and his relatives, I felt a little like reading someone’s private letters – especially referencing events or histories that I was unfamiliar with.
I think this book will mean a lot to people with cancer and to their loved ones. Hopefully I won’t be coming back to this book as a reference in the future…
Next I am re-reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King.
