Readings on life, death and dying

I've read some remarkable writing recently that I simply have to share here.

Most recently, I finished "Hit by Lightning: A Cancer Memoir," included in the anthology The Woman at the Washington Zoo by Marjorie Williams, who was diagnosed, at age 43 and with two young children, with stage IV liver cancer and given only a few months to live. This 32-page essay by one of Washington's most noted journalists is probably the most heartfelt, moving and well-written 32 pages I've read all year:

"What would you do if you found out you had a year to live?... What you do, if you have little kids, is lead as normal a life as possible, only with more pancakes."

"Whether the bad time I had just had lasted five days or five weeks, some inner voice eventually said—and still says—Never mind. Today is a ravishing day, and I will put on a short skirt and high heels and see how much of the future I can inhale."

And this thought-provoking observation:

"I think cancer brings to most people a new freedom to act on the understanding that their time is important.... If you have ever told yourself, breezily, that life is too short to spend any of it with your childhood neighbor's annoying husband, those words now take on the gleeful raiment of simple fact. The knowledge that time's expenditure is important, that it is up to you, is one of the headiest freedoms you will ever feel."

Another memorable and moving piece in the anthology is this beautiful column, her last for the Washington Post (she passed away just two months after it was published). And here is her obituary in the Post.

The other remarkable book I've read recently that touches on death and dying does so from a different point of view. The Year of Magical Thinking is Joan Didion's memoir of the year after her only daughter fell seriously ill and her husband, just days later, died unexpectedly of a massive coronary. Didion's book is also well-written, with clear and hard-edged prose that sparkles with her laconic wit and belies the raw emotion coursing beneath the surface. Unfortunately, I borrowed the copy I read and no longer have it, so I can't quote from it here.

Two other memorable recent reads are The History of Love, a novel about a 70-year-old man and a 14-year-old girl in New York and how their lives, both touched by the same long-lost book, eventually intersect, and No god but God, a history of Islam that has made me reconsider my preconceived notions on how compelling a book on religion could possibly be. Both are well-written and literally unputdownable at times.

On a lighter note, I've started reading, on the Web, the Sunday Washington Post. I'm chagrined to admit that I do this not because of the Post's gold-standard coverage of Capitol Hill or its formidable stable of op-ed columnists, but rather because of two addictive features that run each Sunday: Date Lab and the Style Invitational. Which other nationally-renowned newspapers do you know that run a blind date service and a write-in humor contest on the side? ;)