The End of Your Life Book Club

by Will Schwalbe

Mom would say: “Do your best, and that’s all you can do.”

Some of my books should be awarded their own frequent-flier miles, they’ve traveled so much. I take these volumes on flight after flight with the best of intentions and then wind up reading anything and everything else (SkyMall! Golf Digest!).

That weekend I started it, and then, at about page twenty or so, the magical thing occurred that happens only with the very best books: I became absorbed and obsessed and entered the “Can’t you see I’m reading?” mode.

You could say that the book club became our life, but it would be more accurate to say that our life became a book club. Maybe it had always been one—and it took Mom’s illness to make us realize that. We didn’t talk much about the club. We talked about the books, and we talked about our lives.

Reading isn’t the opposite of doing; it’s the opposite of dying.

“You can only do what you can, and what doesn’t get done, just doesn’t get done.” Mom was forever giving me advice that she would never herself take.

I’d recently told her that I’d become weary of my work, for all the same boring reasons privileged people get sick of their white-collar jobs: too many meetings, too much email, and too much paperwork.

(But she also recognized that not everyone was dealt the same cards. It’s much easier to follow your bliss when you have enough money to pay the rent.)

Throughout her life, whenever Mom was sad or confused or disoriented, she could never concentrate on television, she said, but always sought refuge in a book. Books focused her mind, calmed her, took her outside of herself; television jangled her nerves.

When you couldn’t decide between two things, she suggested you choose the one that allowed you to change course if necessary. Not the road less traveled but the road with the exit ramp.

“But don’t people in book clubs cook things?” Mom asked. I laughed. “We’ll have the world’s only foodless book club.”

“That’s one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we all can talk about when we don’t want to talk about ourselves.”

“The world is complicated,” she added. “You don’t have to have one emotion at a time.”

But the question from Gilead, Mom said, was always the thing you needed to ask yourself: “What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?” It helped you remember that people aren’t here for you; everyone is here for one another.

Books are what bring all the different people in the novel together, Muslims and Jews and Christians. That’s why everyone in the book goes to such lengths to save this one book—one book stands for all books.

When I think back on all the refugee camps I visited, all over the world, the people always asked for the same thing: books. Sometimes even before medicine or shelter—they wanted books for their children.”

Before Mom’s illness they’d developed the ability to selectively ignore each other, a habit I’ve witnessed in most long-term couples.

After a while she added: “If Afghanistan doesn’t have books, the people there don’t have much of a chance. So that’s my New Year’s resolution. I’m going to get this library built.”

“And I have a New Year’s resolution for you, Will,” she said. “You need to stop complaining about your job and just quit it. I’ve told you this before. Not everyone is lucky enough to be able to do that.”

Also, how could anyone who loves books not love a book that is itself so in love with books?

I realized then that for all of us, part of the process of Mom’s dying was mourning not just her death but also the death of our dreams of things to come.

I was learning that when you’re with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time.

“As long as there is paper, people will write, secretly, in small rooms, in the hidden chambers of their minds, just as people whisper the words they’re

He starts to whisper a prayer. “Whatever beings there are, may they be free from suffering. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from enmity. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from hurtfulness. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from ill health. Whatever beings there are, may they be able to protect their own happiness.”

IF The Lizard Cage reminded Mom to send a check to the campaign for Burma, it also inspired her to redouble her efforts for Afghanistan. It was, after all, a book about the importance of books and reading and writing.

This was another lesson I learned from Mom over the course of our book club: Never make assumptions about people. You never know who can and will want to help you until you ask. So you should never assume someone can’t or won’t because of their age, or job, or other interests, or financial situation.

That’s my point, Will. The books are fun, not silly. There’s a difference.”

Evil almost always starts with small cruelties.”

“Mighty is he who conquers himself.”

Mom said, “Kitty admires the nuns’ courage—but she’s every bit as brave as them, braver. The nuns do what they do without fear; she does what she does in spite of it. I think that’s what her friend means when he quotes from the Tao. And besides, the nuns’ reward is in this life and in the life after. They haven’t been duped at all.”

chemo. “I think the other people who are really brave,” Mom continued, “are people who take unpopular stands.

“Funerals and memorial services are just part of life. And I do know that there is life everlasting.” Usually Mom said believe. Recently, I noted, she said know.

What could be more human than to want to live?

Then she continued: “I have learned from the refugees I have met over the last eighteen years to have hope for the future—and that is what has helped me through my life, and I know that has been important to the Class of 2008. I wish you all that for yourselves, and so much more.”

What’s odd about commencement is that so many people think of it as the end of something, the end of high school or college—but that’s not what the word means at all. It means the beginning, the start of something new.

After Mom and I had discussed Home, I joked with my brother that I wished I could be a little more prodigal. He assured me that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. He also pointed out to me something I’d missed about the book club: Mom had finally succeeded in getting me to talk about faith and religion and even Bible stories, something she’d been trying to do for years.

It’s a section where Kabat-Zinn points out that we all know it’s wrong to interrupt each other. And yet we constantly interrupt ourselves. We do it when we check our emails incessantly—or won’t simply let a phone go to voicemail when we’re doing something we enjoy—or when we don’t think a thought through, but allow our minds to fix on temporary concerns or desires.

But modern life itself is an interruption machine: phone calls, emails, texts, news, television, and our own restless minds. The greatest gift you can give anyone is your undivided attention—yet I’d been constantly dividing mine. No one was getting it, not even me.

And I understood suddenly what Kabat-Zinn means about mindfulness—it isn’t a trick or a gimmick. It’s being present in the moment. When I’m with you, I’m with you. Right now. That’s all. No more and no less.

Kabat-Zinn writes, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

“The worse it gets in Afghanistan,” she added, “the more convinced I am that we need to see this library project through. It may not be the biggest thing we can do, but it’s something. And we’ve just got to do something.”

This, I finally realized, was how Mom was able to focus when I was not. It was how she was able to be present with me, present with the people at a benefit or the hospital. She felt whatever emotions she felt, but feeling was never a useful substitute for doing, and she never let the former get in the way of the latter. If anything, she used her emotions to motivate her and help her concentrate. The emphasis for her was always on doing what needed to be done. I had to learn this lesson while she was still there to teach me.

The teacher says: “Loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern world, so full of freedom, independence and our own egotistical selves.” The young man can’t think of anything to say in response. The truth of the statement is too stark for him.

How can you be lonely, Mom said, when there are always people who want to share their stories with you, to tell you about their lives and families and dreams and plans? But now she couldn’t stop thinking about David Rohde and how lonely he must be, separated from his wife, from his books, and, she feared, from anyone who wanted to share their stories with him or hear his.

That’s one of the amazing things great books like this do—they don’t just get you to see the world differently, they get you to look at people, the people all around you, differently.”

As children, we hated this task, but when I saw Mom beam as she thanked people in the hospital, I realized something she had been trying to tell us all along. That there’s great joy in thanking.

What I suddenly understood was that a thank-you note isn’t the price you pay for receiving a gift, as so many children think it is, a kind of minimum tribute or toll, but an opportunity to count your blessings. And gratitude isn’t what you give in exchange for something; it’s what you feel when you are blessed—blessed to have family and friends who care about you, and who want to see you happy. Hence the joy from thanking.

The latter therapy has its roots in a philosophy called Naikan, developed by Ishin Yoshimoto. Naikan reminds people to be grateful for everything. If you are sitting in a chair, you need to realize that someone made that chair, and someone sold it, and someone delivered it—and you are the beneficiary of all that. Just because they didn’t do it especially for you doesn’t mean you aren’t blessed to be using it and enjoying it. The idea is that if you practice the Naikan part of Constructive Living, life becomes a series of small miracles, and you may start to notice everything that goes right in a typical life and not the few things that go wrong.

“We all owe everyone for everything that happens in our lives. But it’s not owing like a debt to one person—it’s really that we owe everyone for everything. Our whole lives can change in an instant—so each person who keeps that from happening, no matter how small a role they play, is also responsible for all of it. Just by giving friendship and love, you keep the people around you from giving up—and each expression of friendship or love may be the one that makes all the difference.”

Certain ARBs (Already Read Books) came in multiples over Christmas. She would write a nice thank-you and pass the duplicates on—to a friend, to a nurse—or leave them on a book-swap table in her building.