What Goldberg ultimately discovers and shares here are not lessons in dying, but rather in learning how to live.
by Stan Goldberg
When Goldberg was diagnosed with cancer, he chose to face his fear by helping others who were already in the process of dying. He signed up as a hospice volunteer and spent several years at the bedsides of the terminally ill.
In this book, he shares the remarkable stories of those he met who were facing the end of life. Their stories shine a light on the human capacity for beauty, insight, forgiveness and gratitude, as we see how people just like us work through anxiety and sadness with bravery and love.
But what is especially remarkable is that the bravery and love are not as much expressed in grand, dramatic gestures as in ordinary acts and small accomplishments — in simple efforts of kindness, in asking for and receiving forgiveness, in the abandoning anger and in learning to speak directly from the heart — and to listen in the same way.
What Goldberg ultimately discovers and shares here are not lessons in dying, but rather in learning how to live.
$14.95 — Trumpeter Books, an imprint of Horticultural Hall, 300 Massachusetts Ave., Boston, MA 02115.
Reprinted from AzNetNews, Volume 28, Number 4, August/September 2009.
April 15, 2012
Book review