A Matter of Death and Life
A candid and unforgettable memoir by renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Irvin D. Yalom and his writer wife, Marilyn Yalom, as they navigate their last few months before her death.
Dr. Irvin Yalom and his wife Marilyn spent nearly their entire adult lives together. Married for 65 years with 4 children, editing and reading one another’s books, their lives are interwoven like fibers of a thread and that is precisely what makes this book, written together in alternating chapters during the last months of Marilyn’s life, as poignant and profound as it is. A Matter of Death and Life shouldered unsurmountable: how will Marilyn, in her last months of terminal cancer prepare to embrace Death? How will Irv say goodbye and face life without his partner?
“Is there any quality to these days I’m fighting for?”, Marilyn ultimately asks herself and her husband after years of cancer treatments. Among all the other gifts this book offers, the illustration of Marilyn’s mindset as she decides that she has reached the zenith of her suffering and chooses a physician-supported death, is an incredible portrayal of a topic gaining much traction in the ethics of death care today.
This book will break your heart into a thousand pieces, it surely did mine. But it also offers the reader a rare glimpse into a love-filled marriage only parsed by death, and an intimate conversation into finding dignity in death. This book is also a fascinating example of denial as Irv dedicated his life to facing death anxiety in his psychiatry practice but is blind-sighted by death when it is on his own doorstep. Last, there is a fragility to aging that Irv and Marilyn illustrate beautifully; for him as he looks back on his work, his life and his books with the cloudiness of age-related dementia, and for her as she surrenders to weakening of her physical body with courage and grace.
Each one of these topics would be a tremendous gift on their own, a brave and candid discussion of some of life’s most difficult topics, but together they offer a gem as dazzling as the incredible marriage at the book's foundation.
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