When Breath Becomes Air

This book was Paul Kalanithi's story of his career as a neurologist and the time he spent between being diagnosed with lung cancer and having his child.

Paul states that "You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote towards which you are ceaselessly striving", and this philosophy was reflected in the things that he described in the book.

I have mixed feelings about this book.

On the one hand, I thought that certain sections were a little too pedantic and focused on the prose of poetically describing the technical details of surgery, with graphic details of slicing skin open and removing skull portions.  Much of the book focused on the uncertainty of Paul's life expectancy, and his decisions to work as a neurosurgeon vs. becoming a researching faculty or becoming an author.  I was expecting to read about some kind of transformation, but the book read more like a personal memoir than a lesson on how to live life.  Nonetheless, my expectations for the book aren't a fair standard to judge it by.

On the other hand, as the fulfillment of a man's dying wishes to become an author, I was very happy for him.

A few years ago, I lost two friends to cancer.  They were both the same age as me.

One was one of my best friends, Shirley.  After meeting her, we quickly became good friends, often having lunch together.  My barometer of friendship is how much I know one's family and friends, and though I hadn't met her brother and sister, I knew about them and the details of their lives.  I met her mom and dad, and some of her closest friends, and knew them all by name, if not by face.  She had given me two books to read, both of which focused on the platonic but intimate relationship between two people, and the death of one.  The books were Tuesdays With Morrie and The Little Prince.  It was a little odd to me that the only two books she gave to me foreshadowed our friendship and her death, as though she was telling me that it would be okay for me after she died.

The second of my friends to die was Pat, who I had only befriended and came to know after his diagnosis with terminal cancer.  We had sleepless nights where we'd text and e-mail each other, talking about mortality and our dreams.  He wanted to learn how to play three songs on guitar and asked me to teach him.  He came over to my house, and we spent hours together, probably talking more than playing.  When he left, I walked him to his car and we made plans to go out to eat shabu shabu.  We never got to have that meal together, and he got too busy for another guitar lesson.

I sometimes wonder about the journey that both Shirley and Pat went through, as they discovered their cancer, to their passing.  Though I had lots of conversations with both of them as they dealt with their cancers, I couldn't possibly know everything that went through their heads.  "When Breath Becomes Air" shares one man's experiences and thoughts as he deals with his terminal illness.

Listening to the book and not thinking that I was getting a feeling of personal attachment towards Paul Kalanithi, I thought in my mind that I wouldn't cry the way that I cried after reading one of Mitch Albom's books.  Then this morning, while listening to Lucy Kalanithi's epilogue, I found tears streaming down my face.