The End of Your Life Book Club ~ a book review

 

I learned about this book through one of my book-loving blogging friends.  I just can't remember which one.  If you are that person and are reading this blog post, I want to say thank you for the review you did.  Although I didn't put it on a list somewhere physically, it was always whirling around in my mind that at some point I wanted to make sure I read the book.

This is a non-fiction book about the life of Mary Anne Schwalbe, and her journey through pancreatic cancer.  The author, Will Schwalbe, was her son who shared his precious times with his mother during her chemo treatments, doctor appointments and helped us to know his mom on a personal level.

Mary Anne Schwalbe was a woman with a big heart...always looking for someone she could help.  She was at one time the Associate Dean of Admissions at Harvard University.  She was also the Founding Director for the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, which is now known as Women's Refugee Commission.  You can read more about her HERE, if you care to.

The Book Club referred to in the title is a book club of two...Will and Mary Anne.  They were both avid readers and would choose books that they would both read and then discuss during Mary Anne's chemo treatments.  Through their discussions of a variety of books, the reader learns more in depth of both their personalities and the causes that drove them.  

I enjoyed the book, not because I necessarily agreed with all of their views on different matters, but because it stretched my thinking a bit.  Normally, when someone is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, they only live a few short months.  Mary Anne lived for almost two years from the time of her diagnosis.  

The book develops one's sense of the Schwalbe family's core values and much of that is detected by some of the books that Mary Anne and Will read and discussed.  Even though the family was Jewish by birth, Mary Anne attended a Presbyterian church.  

Something that this book did for me was it brought back so many precious memories of times I was able to share with my dear mother before she died.  Even when she reached the point that she wasn't verbal, she still responded to the memories that I would share with her from my childhood.  My mother was an avid reader, as I am, but we didn't necessarily enjoy the same books, but it didn't keep us from sharing with one another the contents of the books we did enjoy.

I think I was hesitant about reading this book for so long because I knew in the end, Mary Anne was going to die.  But, if that would be something that might put you off about reading it, please, don't allow it to.  It's only in the last chapter, of 28 chapters, that her death is dealt with.  I think of all that I would have missed by not reading the other 27 chapters because I knew she was going to die.