As at 4:49 PM, July 15, 2022,
I have now finished When Breathe Becomes Air, an autobiography by Paul Kalanithi, and I am genuinely privileged to have read this book, but better yet, to have followed a brave man through his last days.
Having poured tears over the disheartening fate yet beautiful and in ways strengthening journey/sojourn of this man, I now state that there are many books, but few books are a blessing. A thorough genuine blessing.
From the first pages where I was introduced to the rigorous yet soulful tedor of a passionate physician, to the cruel roteness of a dispassionate* doctor, and glimpsing the intriguing quest of a young man in understanding life and mortality, to the last pages of heartwrenching final days of a neurosurgeon-neuroscientist-literature lover who was in every way more than that title through love, hope and strength, I am reminded how life is in both ways fleetingly beautiful and dishearteningly frail.
A man might live to achieve all his ambitions and a man might die at the near-precipice of his time. A child might die before he knows to question life and everything in between, and a man might live to be fully satisfied with life or to be bedridden with regret.
I have cried over books before, two to be exact— A Clockwork Princess and The Fault In Our Stars, and in both cases, it was over mortality. The former more heart and gut-wrenching than the latter but in the end, fictional. However, this time, I was invited into the story of a real man who lived, a real man who impacted real people, and left real imprints on real hearts. While I never knew him, I am glad the people around him had some time to know they were loved by him. I am glad to know have known a man who in the last moment could bravely walk the path to death, not in denial or fear but in serene determination. I am glad to have met a man called Paul Kalanithi. What a brilliant man, what an excellent book.
“Death comes for all of us. For us, for our patients: it is our fate as living, breathing metabolizing organisms.”
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Amazing book!