A sad but ultimately inspiring reminder of the fragility of life and the importance of valuing not just those who have died,...
An educator and young widow and her four children share their heart-wrenching perspectives of the husband and father’s battle with cancer.
After a short-lived, youthful first marriage, Michelle found love with Gus, a retired labor worker 25 years her senior. Together they had three children and raised her daughter from her first marriage. Although Michelle freely admits their marriage was not always perfect, their lives were full of love, humor, and shared family experiences. They were stunned when 62-year-old Gus was diagnosed with liver cancer. Incredibly, he worked—having taken on a second career after retiring—through chemotherapy and a several-month battle until a week before his death, when seemingly, his inability to work stole his will to live. He had been the rock of the family, and his wife, only in her late 30s, and children, ranging from age 10 to 18, were adrift following his death, despite support from close friends. With unflinching honesty and emotion, Michelle and her four children each tell their own stories, with Michelle’s the most detailed. They don’t sugarcoat their own behavior, freely admitting that, in their grief and confusion, they didn’t always behave perfectly. As heartbreaking as their accounts of Gus’ illness and death are, the true value of this memoir is in the warts-and-all description of life after his death, when Michelle sought healing too quickly in another relationship, halfway across the country, upsetting the children, who reacted in the ways adolescents often show displeasure with their parents. Each one admits mistakes, and their ability to forgive one another is what makes this account so valuable. At times, Michelle and the children do succumb to the tendency to idolize (and idealize) Gus; however, Brittany, with the distance of a stepdaughter rather than a biological daughter, lovingly reveals his occasionally embarrassing behavior. Gus emerges as a larger-than-life man whose life was unfortunately cut short.
A sad but ultimately inspiring reminder of the fragility of life and the importance of valuing not just those who have died, but those who remain.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-1452517780
Page Count: 210
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf