Simon Reads and Recommends … or not!
Book
A Better Death: Conversations about the art of living and dying well (Simon & Schuster)
Author
Dr Ranjana Srivastava (one of Australia’s jewels as a practising and experienced oncologist)
Read
January, 2020
If you look at the cover and say to yourself, ‘This is not for me’, then THIS IS PRECISELY THE BOOK FOR YOU (maybe not right now, but sometime you will be needing its practical insights!). It is fair to say reading this book is a life and death experience.
Those practised in the art of putting off important topics, among them – thinking about, or discussing, life and death – I suggest a read of this will do you, your friends and loved ones, a favour.
Initially I put it off. On a day-to-day basis I move between these two extremes. Having come through the first very well - the act of having been given life, the second is hopefully far away. What Dr Srivastava set me straight on (though in a way that was like clear water cascading over me in the warm sunshine, calming and gentle) is that the start, the progression and the end of life need to have a relationship. The more you consider this the better for all concerned. They are all a part of the same agreement – you live, therefore, you die.
The more I read Dr Srivastava’s anecdotes and reflections from someone whose working life both witnesses and examines the crossroad between life and death, the more I felt calm, resolute and determined to set myself on course for a better life and, as a consequence, a more fulfilling death.
‘Really?’ you ask - when there is a possibility I will have no such control and life will be taken away suddenly, with no chance to shape death’s shadow. That occurrence is not the function of this book. When there is no preparation time, the death sculptor can do little other than to have lived a good (or bad) life. In my late 50s at this moment of writing, if statistics are accurate and the proverbial bus does not mount the curb and wipe me out, I have good prospects of living deep into my eighties or beyond.
Yet, there is a chance that tomorrow or next week, next year, I may end up in the emergency ward of a hospital or be diagnosed with a terminal illness or worse – something equally nasty befalls a family member or friend. Thinking on this is not a jinx or a prediction, nor is it wasting time on something that may never happen. If you have time on your side as you age – a good conversation is around making the best of the rest of it, and the end of it. That is the hard chat Dr Srivastava so delightfully starts, and with her empathy and reassurance, softens the edges.
If you are of the ‘sandwich generation’ – younger children and older parents - this book is worth a daily piece of your time. If you are entering the period where you are considering life post-work, or your parents, relatives or friends are entering the twilight years, happily or otherwise, the wisdom that unfolds in these pages is gentle, logical and achievable AND - without a murmur on superannuation!
If I am granted more time in this life, what I hope to be able to control is how I go about living and interacting with others so that if, per chance, I turn up in Dr Srivastava’s next book, it would be as a character who personifies positive traits under chapters about Believing, Acceptance, Meaning, Forgiveness, Equanimity, Kindness and Gratitude. ‘He lived and died with grace’ would be a wonderful epitaph.
This is a unique manual for oneself and those we love. Everyone will see a bit of themselves in this book – hopefully as an inspirer (not an ‘influencer’!) who is living a legacy for others to emulate. If the opposite might be true, then it is not too late to work out ways, with great real-life stories to draw on, that you can change how you go about things and be someone who is admired for living and dying well. Both will be equally enduring legacies for those who know and love you.
SIMON SAYS – 8.5 out of 10.