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ablotial 's review for:
The End of Your Life Book Club
by Will Schwalbe
It's been almost a month since I finished this book, and I am still hesitant to put my thoughts down here. But I have now finished four more books since this one, and I really need to move on with my reviews!
On the one hand, this book was incredibly depressing. The author's mother is diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, and it is the story of this diagnosis through her death. The author and his mother were very close, and we see them go through many stages of grief as the story progresses, even though she is still alive. He often expresses a desire to continue living life and not giving things up to be near her more often because he is afraid she will take that to mean she is getting worse and he is giving up hope. But on the other hand, he is afraid he will regret not spending more time with her, knowing that she only had a limited time left. It seems to me that with their book club, they had a great compromise -- they weren't going out of their way to spend inordinate amounts of time together, but the time they were spending was "quality time".
On the other hand, the book was quite inspiring. The mother was quite the woman -- extremely ambitious and successful and very worldly. She was more interested in helping others than herself and spent the end of her life not only reading books but also supporting efforts to build a library in Afghanistan. She was the kind of woman who paid for other people's medicine when she had only just met them, volunteered to travel to a refugee camp in a foreign country based entirely on a letter without verifying that the place really existed first, offered bus seats to elderly or pregnant women even when she was incredibly weak herself from chemo treatments, and insisted on living life to the fullest right up until she just couldn't anymore. Cancer is a scary disease, but her attitude was really great throughout it all.
And of course, lots of great recommendations for books to read, and analysis of stories!
But one thing bothered me. Ok, two related things. First... and this is probably just because I am young but ... the book started and we are made to feel all sad that this horrible disease was attacking this woman who was doing so much and, and, and... and then we find out that she is over 70 years old. And I mean... it is still horribly sad when cancer claims a life, no matter whose it is, and especially this woman who had done so much for the world but they just seemed so SURPRISED by it. It would be different if this were a 20 year old writing about his 45 year old mother. But when you are over 70 don't you sort of expect these things to happen? Hopefully that doesn't sound too insensitive -- it's still very sad. Mostly because you have all this time to build up to the death instead of it just happening.
And on a related note the second thing... The whole time, I was sort of expecting the father to die. Not that I wanted him to, of course, but ... he was much older than the mother, and it was made clear that he was (is?) not as healthy and outgoing as his wife, a bit overweight, etc. There was even one point in the book where the author notices at dinner one night that his father looked even more fragile than his mother did and had seemed to have aged a lot in the last few years. I thought at that point that he would realize that he should be making an effort to spend time with his father, too! And really, his father being so much older, it was very possible the father could have died from natural causes, or a stroke, or complications from pneumonia, even before the mother did just from ... being old. I think as our parents age, we need to make an effort to spend time with them or reach out and talk to them more often whether they have cancer or not! (not that I am very good at this, but ...)
Anyway, this was an excellent book, if a little pretentiously written at times, and it really made me think and evoked a lot of different emotions as I was listening. I often got to work and had to sit in the car for a few minutes to stop crying and fix my makeup before I went in to face the day. Not the best going to work material, but I'm very glad I experienced it.
On the one hand, this book was incredibly depressing. The author's mother is diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, and it is the story of this diagnosis through her death. The author and his mother were very close, and we see them go through many stages of grief as the story progresses, even though she is still alive. He often expresses a desire to continue living life and not giving things up to be near her more often because he is afraid she will take that to mean she is getting worse and he is giving up hope. But on the other hand, he is afraid he will regret not spending more time with her, knowing that she only had a limited time left. It seems to me that with their book club, they had a great compromise -- they weren't going out of their way to spend inordinate amounts of time together, but the time they were spending was "quality time".
On the other hand, the book was quite inspiring. The mother was quite the woman -- extremely ambitious and successful and very worldly. She was more interested in helping others than herself and spent the end of her life not only reading books but also supporting efforts to build a library in Afghanistan. She was the kind of woman who paid for other people's medicine when she had only just met them, volunteered to travel to a refugee camp in a foreign country based entirely on a letter without verifying that the place really existed first, offered bus seats to elderly or pregnant women even when she was incredibly weak herself from chemo treatments, and insisted on living life to the fullest right up until she just couldn't anymore. Cancer is a scary disease, but her attitude was really great throughout it all.
And of course, lots of great recommendations for books to read, and analysis of stories!
But one thing bothered me. Ok, two related things. First... and this is probably just because I am young but ... the book started and we are made to feel all sad that this horrible disease was attacking this woman who was doing so much and, and, and... and then we find out that she is over 70 years old. And I mean... it is still horribly sad when cancer claims a life, no matter whose it is, and especially this woman who had done so much for the world but they just seemed so SURPRISED by it. It would be different if this were a 20 year old writing about his 45 year old mother. But when you are over 70 don't you sort of expect these things to happen? Hopefully that doesn't sound too insensitive -- it's still very sad. Mostly because you have all this time to build up to the death instead of it just happening.
And on a related note the second thing... The whole time, I was sort of expecting the father to die. Not that I wanted him to, of course, but ... he was much older than the mother, and it was made clear that he was (is?) not as healthy and outgoing as his wife, a bit overweight, etc. There was even one point in the book where the author notices at dinner one night that his father looked even more fragile than his mother did and had seemed to have aged a lot in the last few years. I thought at that point that he would realize that he should be making an effort to spend time with his father, too! And really, his father being so much older, it was very possible the father could have died from natural causes, or a stroke, or complications from pneumonia, even before the mother did just from ... being old. I think as our parents age, we need to make an effort to spend time with them or reach out and talk to them more often whether they have cancer or not! (not that I am very good at this, but ...)
Anyway, this was an excellent book, if a little pretentiously written at times, and it really made me think and evoked a lot of different emotions as I was listening. I often got to work and had to sit in the car for a few minutes to stop crying and fix my makeup before I went in to face the day. Not the best going to work material, but I'm very glad I experienced it.