When Breath Becomes Air Paperback – 3 January 2017
by
Paul Kalanithi
(Author)
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Product details
- ASIN : 1784701998
- Language: : English
- Paperback : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781784701994
- ISBN-13 : 978-1784701994
- Best Sellers Rank: 1,684 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
To the venerable canon of doctors who could write (from Chekhov to Oliver Sacks and Atul Gawande), another name can be added: that of Paul Kalanithi... Brilliantly written. -- Louise Carpenter * Sunday Telegraph * Dr Kalanithi describes, clearly and simply, and entirely without self-pity, his journey from innocent medical student to professionally detached and all-powerful neurosurgeon to helpless patient, dying from cancer. He learns lessons about the reality of illness and the doctor-patient relationship that most doctors only learn in old age but Paul Kalanithi died at the tragically early age of 37. Every doctor should read this book - written by a member of our own tribe, it helps us understand and overcome the barriers we all erect between ourselves and our patients as soon as we are out of medical school -- Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm As thought-provoking as it was moving. The sheer exuberance of Kalnithi's intellectual curiosity shone through in his writing. -- Katie Law * Evening Standard, Book of the Year * An astonishingly affecting memoir and eloquent examination of what it is to be human and confront your own mortality... This is a remarkable book by a man who was driven by his passion for his life, his loves and his career. His death is undoubtedly a tragedy but in writing this memoir he has guaranteed that his voice and the important story it tells will resonate for years to come. -- Mernie Gilmore * Daily Express * A powerful and compelling read. * The Economist, Book of the Year * It turns out not really to be about dying at all but about life and how to live it - though the closeness of death gives it an urgency and economy... When Breath Becomes Air is a Renaissance book from a Renaissance man. It is a work of philosophy and morality, a reconciliation of science and religion. There is even plot and excitement... It was only with the restrained, elegant epilogue written by his wife Lucy Kalanithi that I found myself weeping helplessly... When Breath Becomes Air tells us what means to live a good life, by giving us a glimpse into an exceptional one. -- Lucy Kellaway * Financial Times * A meditation on what makes a life worth living. * Guardian * A remarkable book... Kalanithi writes very well, in a plain and matter-of-fact way, without a trace of self-pity, and you are immediately gripped and carried along... [He] was clearly a deeply thoughtful and compassionate man, and his death is a great loss to medicine, but at least he has left this remarkable book behind. -- Dr Henry Marsh * Observer * A tremendous book, crackling with life, animated by wonder and by the question of how we should live. Paul Kalanithi lived and died in the pursuit of excellence, and by this testimonial, he achieved it. -- Gavin Francis, author of Adventures in Human Being When I came to the end of the last flawless paragraph of When Breath Becomes Air, all I could do was turn to the first page and read the whole thing again. Searingly intelligent, beautifully written, and beyond brave, I haven't been so marked by a book in years. -- Gabriel Weston, author of DIRECT RED Exceptional. -- Katie Law * Evening Standard * The power of this book lies in its eloquent insistence that we are all confronting our mortality every day, whether we know it or not. The real question we face, Kalanithi writes, is not how long, but rather how, we will live - and the answer does not appear in any medical textbook. -- Alice Okeeffe * Guardian * A stark, fascinating, well-written and heroic memoir. -- Stefanie Marsh * The Times * Powerful and poignant... Elegantly written posthumous memoir... Should be compulsory for anyone who intends to be a doctor... A profound reflection on the meaning of life. -- Daisy Goodwin * Sunday Times * Extraordinary...Remarkable... luminous, revelatory memoir about mortality and what makes being alive meaningful ... Lyrical, intimate, insistent and profound. Kalanithi had the mind of the polymath and the ear of a poet. -- Heather Hodson * Daily Telegraph * Less a memoir than a reflection on life and purpose... A vital book. * The Economist * Powerful and poignant. * The Sunday Times * A great, indelible book ... as intimate and illuminating as Atul Gawande's "Being Mortal," to cite only one recent example of a doctor's book that has had exceptionally wide appeal ... I guarantee that finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option ... gripping from the start ... None of it is maudlin. Nothing is exaggerated. As he wrote to a friend: "It's just tragic enough and just imaginable enough." And just important enough to be unmissable. * New York Times * Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful. -- Atul Gawande, author of BEING MORTAL A vital book about dying. Awe-inspiring and exquisite. Obligatory reading for the living. -- Nigella Lawson
About the Author
PAUL KALANITHI was a neurosurgeon and writer. He held degrees in English literature, human biology, and history and philoso phy of science and medicine from Stanford and Cambridge universities before graduating from Yale School of Medicine. He also received the American Academy of Neu rological Surgery's highest award for research. His reflections on doctoring and illness have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Paris Review Daily. Kalanithi died in March 2015, aged 37. He is survived by his wife, Lucy, and their daughter, Elizabeth Acadia.
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The paper used to make the book wasn't cut properly, leaving jaggered edges on the side of the book. Amazon didn't even bother wrapping the book up with bubble wrap to protect the book, so it arrived with damaged corners. I even had to swap the book once because it arrived with stains on the cover and horribly damaged edges. Overall a terrible experience...
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A really good read.
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very moving book
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4.7 out of 5 stars
9,361 reviews

Pamela J.H.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Attempts too much, not for everyone
19 August 2018 -
Published on Amazon.comVerified Purchase
When Breath Becomes Air (2016) made a huge splash, becoming a NYT bestseller, etc. Even Bill Gates read (and reviewed, and loved) it. In it, Dr. Paul Kalanithi basically tells his life’s story in two main threads: how he came to choose, learn, and practice medicine, and how he’s fighting late-stage lung cancer in only his mid-30s. The situation has (had…) all the makings of a kind of hero’s journey, and no wonder it grabbed people’s attention. A superstar young doctor dying of lung cancer right after bringing home a new baby, imagine that.
But as far as I can tell, the Paul Kalanthi described in the book would want me to write an honest critique of his work, and I can’t be 100% positive. I have no problem with the lofty philosophical bits, but many other prospective readers will. Kalanithi seems to think that his decision to study medicine is deeply interesting (he studied literature first, and first bristled at the thought since there were doctors in the family). But I didn’t care so much – who among us hasn’t changed their college major or master’s program once or thrice? Depending on your existing worldview, you’ll either find Kalanithi’s ultimate choice of neurosurgery as either inspired or eye-rollingly hubristic.
Kalanthi is interested in the mind-body problem, and I know that he would have studied it specifically. But, disappointingly, he can’t muster much more to say about it than platitudinous rhetorical questions (“There must be a way, I thought, that the language of life as experienced – of passion, of hunger, of love – bore some relationship, however convoluted, to the language of neurons, digestive tracts, and heartbeats.”)
For someone who decided (years ago, as a student) that “human relationality” “undergirds meaning,” it’s a little rich that Kalanithi had become estranged from his wife prior to his diagnosis and then barely mentions her pregnancy in passing. I do believe it’s noble that Kalanithi tried to relate to his patients on a human level, especially seeing as how he operates on what he takes to be the seat of their souls. But readers are just as likely to feel alienated by Kalanithi’s focus on strangers to the detriment of those close by. It’s like an overdone character in a book: doctor too busy caring for patients to care for his own wife, oops! The very last paragraphs Paul wrote are about his infant daughter Cady, and the joy she brought him as he died. But that’s why those bits seem a little surprising. Perhaps, due to Kalanithi’s increasing frailty, the part of the journey that turned him from arrogant doctor into sated family man simply went mostly unwritten.
To be clear, producing a single book that encapsulates everything someone with a full professional and personal life might want to say is a totally Herculean task (especially to undertake while already critically/terminally ill). It’s certainly no surprise that When Breath Becomes Air isn’t completely satisfactory in that regard. You don’t have to be a perfect person to write a good book, either. But since this is a book review…
The highlight reel of Kalanithi’s life doesn’t make you feel especially connected to him, but you feel obligated to preemptively develop some empathy because you know what’s coming next. His experiences training as a doctor are sort of depressing and cliched: start ambitious, end desensitized. His experiences as a student shouldn’t have to be that significant. But because his life is turning out to be rather short and he was a student for most of it, they become forced into significance. I don’t know exactly what I’d want anyone, dying or not, to say about “human relationality” vis a vis meaning in life (personally, I don’t think there’s any such meaning to be had, but the question comes up often enough that there has to be something to say).
Throughout, Kalanithi’s writing is alternately beautiful and cringe-worthily heavy-handed (“in taking up another’s cross, one must sometimes get crushed by the weight”). It’s clear that he’s trying to find a comfortable writing voice (while also grappling with the weightiest possible subject matter), and under such pressure. What a shame that he got only an ill-fated Titanic crack at writing a book. If this material had spanned a few decades instead, who knows how it could have come out.
I did especially enjoy (???) the section on glioblastoma, from a neurosurgeon’s point of view. It helped me to more fully envision the events that unfolded around my family member’s recent diagnosis. The epilogue, by Paul’s widow Lucy Kalanithi, is quite beautiful (a number of Amazon reviewers like it better than the rest of the book). It helps to drive home that Paul is gone, his life’s previous work (doctoring), new work (writing), and would-have-been-future-work (parenting) all left unfinished. She too must find her voice for this task under immense pressure, kudos for that. I have only begun to dip a toe into the mental fog of grief and it’s enough to make you forget how to brush your teeth, let alone how to write something huge numbers of strangers would want to read.
All of the above notwithstanding, I read the book very quickly and definitely cried at the end.
Read this book if you’re interested in how a doctor thinks about his own death and if you don’t mind stories without silver linings.
Don’t read this book if you’re very put off by arrogance or intellectualism.
But as far as I can tell, the Paul Kalanthi described in the book would want me to write an honest critique of his work, and I can’t be 100% positive. I have no problem with the lofty philosophical bits, but many other prospective readers will. Kalanithi seems to think that his decision to study medicine is deeply interesting (he studied literature first, and first bristled at the thought since there were doctors in the family). But I didn’t care so much – who among us hasn’t changed their college major or master’s program once or thrice? Depending on your existing worldview, you’ll either find Kalanithi’s ultimate choice of neurosurgery as either inspired or eye-rollingly hubristic.
Kalanthi is interested in the mind-body problem, and I know that he would have studied it specifically. But, disappointingly, he can’t muster much more to say about it than platitudinous rhetorical questions (“There must be a way, I thought, that the language of life as experienced – of passion, of hunger, of love – bore some relationship, however convoluted, to the language of neurons, digestive tracts, and heartbeats.”)
For someone who decided (years ago, as a student) that “human relationality” “undergirds meaning,” it’s a little rich that Kalanithi had become estranged from his wife prior to his diagnosis and then barely mentions her pregnancy in passing. I do believe it’s noble that Kalanithi tried to relate to his patients on a human level, especially seeing as how he operates on what he takes to be the seat of their souls. But readers are just as likely to feel alienated by Kalanithi’s focus on strangers to the detriment of those close by. It’s like an overdone character in a book: doctor too busy caring for patients to care for his own wife, oops! The very last paragraphs Paul wrote are about his infant daughter Cady, and the joy she brought him as he died. But that’s why those bits seem a little surprising. Perhaps, due to Kalanithi’s increasing frailty, the part of the journey that turned him from arrogant doctor into sated family man simply went mostly unwritten.
To be clear, producing a single book that encapsulates everything someone with a full professional and personal life might want to say is a totally Herculean task (especially to undertake while already critically/terminally ill). It’s certainly no surprise that When Breath Becomes Air isn’t completely satisfactory in that regard. You don’t have to be a perfect person to write a good book, either. But since this is a book review…
The highlight reel of Kalanithi’s life doesn’t make you feel especially connected to him, but you feel obligated to preemptively develop some empathy because you know what’s coming next. His experiences training as a doctor are sort of depressing and cliched: start ambitious, end desensitized. His experiences as a student shouldn’t have to be that significant. But because his life is turning out to be rather short and he was a student for most of it, they become forced into significance. I don’t know exactly what I’d want anyone, dying or not, to say about “human relationality” vis a vis meaning in life (personally, I don’t think there’s any such meaning to be had, but the question comes up often enough that there has to be something to say).
Throughout, Kalanithi’s writing is alternately beautiful and cringe-worthily heavy-handed (“in taking up another’s cross, one must sometimes get crushed by the weight”). It’s clear that he’s trying to find a comfortable writing voice (while also grappling with the weightiest possible subject matter), and under such pressure. What a shame that he got only an ill-fated Titanic crack at writing a book. If this material had spanned a few decades instead, who knows how it could have come out.
I did especially enjoy (???) the section on glioblastoma, from a neurosurgeon’s point of view. It helped me to more fully envision the events that unfolded around my family member’s recent diagnosis. The epilogue, by Paul’s widow Lucy Kalanithi, is quite beautiful (a number of Amazon reviewers like it better than the rest of the book). It helps to drive home that Paul is gone, his life’s previous work (doctoring), new work (writing), and would-have-been-future-work (parenting) all left unfinished. She too must find her voice for this task under immense pressure, kudos for that. I have only begun to dip a toe into the mental fog of grief and it’s enough to make you forget how to brush your teeth, let alone how to write something huge numbers of strangers would want to read.
All of the above notwithstanding, I read the book very quickly and definitely cried at the end.
Read this book if you’re interested in how a doctor thinks about his own death and if you don’t mind stories without silver linings.
Don’t read this book if you’re very put off by arrogance or intellectualism.
355 people found this helpful

Ashutosh S. Jogalekar
5.0 out of 5 stars
A remarkable book: Edifying, heartbreaking, eloquent and very real
2 December 2015 -
Published on Amazon.com
I read this book in one sitting, long after the lights should have been turned off. I felt like not doing so would have been a disservice to Paul Kalanithi. After reading the book I felt stunned and hopeful in equal parts. Stunned because of the realization that someone as prodigiously talented and eloquent as Dr. Kalanithi was taken from the world at such an early age. Hopeful because even in his brief life of thirty-seven years he showcased what we as human beings are capable of in our best incarnations. His family can rest assured that he will live on through his book.
When Breath Becomes Air details Dr. Kalanithi's life as a neurosurgeon and his fight against advanced lung cancer. Even in his short life he achieved noteworthy recognition as a scholar, a surgeon, a scientist and now - posthumously - as a writer. The book is a tale of tribulations and frank reflections. Ultimately there's not much triumph in it in the traditional sense but there is a dogged, quiet resilience and a frank earthiness that endures long after the last word appears. The tribulations occur in both Dr. Kalanithi's stellar career and his refusal to give in to the illness which ultimately consumed him.
The first part of the book could almost stand separately as an outstanding account of the coming of age of a neurosurgeon and writer. Dr. Kalanithi talks about his upbringing as the child of hardworking Indian immigrant parents and his tenacious and passionate espousal of medicine and literature. He speaks lovingly of his relationship with his remarkable wife - also a doctor - who he met in medical school and who played an outsized role in supporting him through everything he went through. He had a stunning and multifaceted career, studying biology and literature at Stanford, then history and philosophy of medicine at Cambridge, and finally neurosurgery at Yale.
Along the way he became not just a neurosurgeon who worked grueling hours and tried to glimpse the very soul of his discipline, but also an eloquent writer. The mark of a man of letters is evident everywhere in the book, and quotes from Eliot, Beckett, Pope and Shakespeare make frequent appearances. Accounts of how Dr. Kalanithi wrested with walking the line between objective medicine and compassionate humanity when it came to treating his patients give us an inside view of medicine as practiced at its most intimate level. Metaphors abound and the prose often soars: When describing how important it is to develop good surgical technique, he tells us that "Technical excellence was a moral requirement"; meanwhile, the overwhelming stress of late night shifts, hundred hour weeks and patients with acute trauma made him occasionally feel like he was "trapped in an endless jungle summer, wet with sweat, the rain of tears of the dying pouring down". This is writing that comes not from the brain or from the heart, but from the gut. When we lost Dr. Kalanithi we lost not only a great doctor but a great writer spun from the same cloth as Oliver Sacks and Atul Gawande.
It is in the second part of the book that the devastating tide of disease and death creeps in, even as Dr. Kalanithi is suddenly transformed from a doctor into a patient. It must be slightly bizarre to be on the other side of the mirror and intimately know everything that is happening to your body and Dr. Kalanithi is brutally frank in communicating his disbelief, his tears, his hope and his understanding of his fatal disease. It's worth noting that this candid recognition permeates the entire account. Science mingles with emotion as compassionate doctors, family and a battery of medications and tests become a mainstay of life. The painful uncertainty which he documents - in particular the tyranny of statistics which makes it impossible to predict how a specific individual will react to cancer therapy - must sadly be familiar to anyone who has had experience with the disease. As he says, "One has a very different relationship with statistics when one becomes one". There are heartbreaking descriptions of how at one point the cancer seemed to have almost disappeared and how, after Dr. Kalanithi had again cautiously made plans for a hopeful future with his wife, it returned with a vengeance and he had to finally stop working. There is no bravado in the story; as he says, the tumor was what it was and you simply experienced the feelings it brought to your mind and heart.
What makes the book so valuable is this ready admission of what terminal disease feels like, especially an admission that is nonetheless infused with wise acceptance, hope and a tenacious desire to live, work and love normally. In spite of the diagnosis Dr. Kalanithi tries very hard - and succeeds admirably - to live a normal life. He returns to his surgery, he spends time with his family and most importantly, he decides to have a child with his wife. In his everyday struggles is seen a chronicle of the struggles that we will all face in some regard, and which thousands of people face on a daily basis. His constant partner in this struggle is his exemplary wife Lucy, whose epilogue is almost as eloquent as his own writing; I really hope that she picks up the baton where he left off.
As Lucy tells us in the epilogue, this is not some simple tale of a man who somehow "beats" a disease by refusing to give up. It's certainly that, but it's much more because it's a very human tale of failure and fear, of uncertainty and despair, of cynicism and anger. And yes, it is also a tale of scientific understanding, of battling a disease even in the face of uncertainty, of poetry and philosophy, of love and family, and of bequeathing a legacy to a two year old daughter who will soon understand the kind of man her father was and the heritage he left behind. It's as good a testament to Dr. Kalanithi's favorite Beckett quote as anything I can think of: "I can't go on. I will go on".
Read this book; it's devastating and heartbreaking, inspiring and edifying. Most importantly, it's real.
When Breath Becomes Air details Dr. Kalanithi's life as a neurosurgeon and his fight against advanced lung cancer. Even in his short life he achieved noteworthy recognition as a scholar, a surgeon, a scientist and now - posthumously - as a writer. The book is a tale of tribulations and frank reflections. Ultimately there's not much triumph in it in the traditional sense but there is a dogged, quiet resilience and a frank earthiness that endures long after the last word appears. The tribulations occur in both Dr. Kalanithi's stellar career and his refusal to give in to the illness which ultimately consumed him.
The first part of the book could almost stand separately as an outstanding account of the coming of age of a neurosurgeon and writer. Dr. Kalanithi talks about his upbringing as the child of hardworking Indian immigrant parents and his tenacious and passionate espousal of medicine and literature. He speaks lovingly of his relationship with his remarkable wife - also a doctor - who he met in medical school and who played an outsized role in supporting him through everything he went through. He had a stunning and multifaceted career, studying biology and literature at Stanford, then history and philosophy of medicine at Cambridge, and finally neurosurgery at Yale.
Along the way he became not just a neurosurgeon who worked grueling hours and tried to glimpse the very soul of his discipline, but also an eloquent writer. The mark of a man of letters is evident everywhere in the book, and quotes from Eliot, Beckett, Pope and Shakespeare make frequent appearances. Accounts of how Dr. Kalanithi wrested with walking the line between objective medicine and compassionate humanity when it came to treating his patients give us an inside view of medicine as practiced at its most intimate level. Metaphors abound and the prose often soars: When describing how important it is to develop good surgical technique, he tells us that "Technical excellence was a moral requirement"; meanwhile, the overwhelming stress of late night shifts, hundred hour weeks and patients with acute trauma made him occasionally feel like he was "trapped in an endless jungle summer, wet with sweat, the rain of tears of the dying pouring down". This is writing that comes not from the brain or from the heart, but from the gut. When we lost Dr. Kalanithi we lost not only a great doctor but a great writer spun from the same cloth as Oliver Sacks and Atul Gawande.
It is in the second part of the book that the devastating tide of disease and death creeps in, even as Dr. Kalanithi is suddenly transformed from a doctor into a patient. It must be slightly bizarre to be on the other side of the mirror and intimately know everything that is happening to your body and Dr. Kalanithi is brutally frank in communicating his disbelief, his tears, his hope and his understanding of his fatal disease. It's worth noting that this candid recognition permeates the entire account. Science mingles with emotion as compassionate doctors, family and a battery of medications and tests become a mainstay of life. The painful uncertainty which he documents - in particular the tyranny of statistics which makes it impossible to predict how a specific individual will react to cancer therapy - must sadly be familiar to anyone who has had experience with the disease. As he says, "One has a very different relationship with statistics when one becomes one". There are heartbreaking descriptions of how at one point the cancer seemed to have almost disappeared and how, after Dr. Kalanithi had again cautiously made plans for a hopeful future with his wife, it returned with a vengeance and he had to finally stop working. There is no bravado in the story; as he says, the tumor was what it was and you simply experienced the feelings it brought to your mind and heart.
What makes the book so valuable is this ready admission of what terminal disease feels like, especially an admission that is nonetheless infused with wise acceptance, hope and a tenacious desire to live, work and love normally. In spite of the diagnosis Dr. Kalanithi tries very hard - and succeeds admirably - to live a normal life. He returns to his surgery, he spends time with his family and most importantly, he decides to have a child with his wife. In his everyday struggles is seen a chronicle of the struggles that we will all face in some regard, and which thousands of people face on a daily basis. His constant partner in this struggle is his exemplary wife Lucy, whose epilogue is almost as eloquent as his own writing; I really hope that she picks up the baton where he left off.
As Lucy tells us in the epilogue, this is not some simple tale of a man who somehow "beats" a disease by refusing to give up. It's certainly that, but it's much more because it's a very human tale of failure and fear, of uncertainty and despair, of cynicism and anger. And yes, it is also a tale of scientific understanding, of battling a disease even in the face of uncertainty, of poetry and philosophy, of love and family, and of bequeathing a legacy to a two year old daughter who will soon understand the kind of man her father was and the heritage he left behind. It's as good a testament to Dr. Kalanithi's favorite Beckett quote as anything I can think of: "I can't go on. I will go on".
Read this book; it's devastating and heartbreaking, inspiring and edifying. Most importantly, it's real.
1,944 people found this helpful

Jennifer
4.0 out of 5 stars
What makes life meaningful?
4 April 2017 -
Published on Amazon.comVerified Purchase
At the age of thirty-six, Paul Kalanithi is diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. “When Breath Becomes Air” is his unfinished memoir. From an early age, Paul became interested and searched for what makes life meaningful. This book walks us through some of the profound moments of Paul’s life, what he saw and how he felt, and how these events impacted and shaped his life.
It was Paul’s love of literature, and his interest in biological philosophy that would one day lead him to become a neurosurgeon. Books and words connect people and it’s this connection – relationships – that make life meaningful. The process of experiencing life occurs in the brain, but sometimes the brain is broken or isn’t working properly. Paul wanted to help people, and to understand for himself, just what makes life worth living.
The beautifully written epilogue, which was written by his wife Lucy, will break your heart, and give you hope at the same time. Here are a couple of quotes from this section.
"… [W]e knew that one trick to managing a terminal illness is to be deeply in love-to be vulnerable, kind, generous, grateful."
"I expected to feel only empty and heartbroken after Paul died. It never occurred to me that you could love someone the same way after he was gone, that I would continue to feel such love and gratitude alongside the terrible sorrow, the grief so heavy that at times I shiver and moan under the weight of it."
This was a beautiful story that made me cry, it made me think, it made me appreciate life, and I will never be the same because I read it.
It was Paul’s love of literature, and his interest in biological philosophy that would one day lead him to become a neurosurgeon. Books and words connect people and it’s this connection – relationships – that make life meaningful. The process of experiencing life occurs in the brain, but sometimes the brain is broken or isn’t working properly. Paul wanted to help people, and to understand for himself, just what makes life worth living.
The beautifully written epilogue, which was written by his wife Lucy, will break your heart, and give you hope at the same time. Here are a couple of quotes from this section.
"… [W]e knew that one trick to managing a terminal illness is to be deeply in love-to be vulnerable, kind, generous, grateful."
"I expected to feel only empty and heartbroken after Paul died. It never occurred to me that you could love someone the same way after he was gone, that I would continue to feel such love and gratitude alongside the terrible sorrow, the grief so heavy that at times I shiver and moan under the weight of it."
This was a beautiful story that made me cry, it made me think, it made me appreciate life, and I will never be the same because I read it.
119 people found this helpful
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