When Breath Becomes Air

"Death comes for all of us..."

It's a truth universally ignored and, quite often, feared. From the moment we are born, it is the inevitable fate that awaits us all. The only difference with someone like Dr. Paul Kalanithi is that he's been given a timeline of sorts for when that final bill will finally come through.

And with that begins a book that I will never forget. 

I've wanted to read this story since the hype began over its release in early 2016. It's the memoir of a neurosurgeon who faced - and wrote about - his own journey towards death. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, I knew the writing would be good and I knew the story would be powerful. It's the power of it all that also kept me at bay.

I'm terrified of death. My own and other people's. I often think about the idea that one day, it's all simply... over. So, reading a true and unflinching story of a man younger than me careening towards a death even he can't prevent didn't sound like the most enjoyable way to spend my time. Sometimes, though, you have to face what scares you to better understand why it frightens you so much.

So, I held my breath. And, I began. And, I held it until the end. Until the breath released in quiet sobs.

The brave, powerful end.

Paul Kalanithi's path took him from studying literature to medical school, as he hoped to better understand how our brain influences who we are. As he tells the story of his life in residency, you learn what an honest, humble and brilliant man he was. Just when he and his wife, who is also a doctor, were finally ready to begin their lives together, he's diagnosed with the lung cancer that will certainly kill him. You follow him through treatment highs and lows and revelations of what his life has become. But, that's not what makes this story so powerful. What makes it powerful is how he unflinchingly stares death down. 

Most powerfully, his oncologist won't evaluate his cancer in terms of months or years left to live. She encourages him instead to consider his values. What does he want to do with the time he has left. Continue practicing medicine? Take a different path in research? Write a book? Watching him make those choices will have you thinking of your own life, your own values. He has a timeline, but there's no reason to wait for a terminal diagnosis to consider what's most important in your life.

Kalanithi doesn't write about his last days before his death. He loses his strength long before that. Instead, the book that meant so much for him to write is finished by his grieving wife, who describes his final days - his final breaths. And shares how he would want his life remembered.

This book, while bleak in subject matter, somehow manages to be powerful and uplifting as well. It's a book that changes you, a book that will have you reevaluate the way you consider death - and life.