Feb 13

Feb 13 A really good read - Dear Life

Part memoir, part tribute to her beloved GP father, part call-to-action, Dear Life is as clear-sighted and movingly memorable an ode to the joy of living, as it is a rallying cry to understand how to do dying better.

It seems counter-intuitive, I know, to say that a book that has death as its central theme, is both uplifting and life-affirming. But the combination of former TV journalist turned NHS palliative care doctor, Rachel Clarke’s powerful writing and her passionate, and compassionate, commitment to her patients, her end of life work and the insight it has given her into the precious, beautiful, messy business of living, makes Dear Life both of those things and more.

Rachel’s telling of her decision to become a doctor in her mid-twenties, her experiences of training and how and why she is drawn to palliative care as a specialisation, is threaded through with the ever-wise, ever-supportive presence of her physician father, whose own imminent demise is revealed in the opening chapter (no spoilers here). Her pride, respect and love for him shine through the memories she shares of her childhood and the stories she tells of his steadfast guidance at times of personal and professional challenges.

Storytelling is at the heart of Dear Life and it is the stories of Rachel’s patients and their loved ones - the young woman who joyfully marries her beloved fiancee just hours before her death; the mother who is tenderly shown how to wash the body of her dead 19 year old son; the long-married man, whose deeply unconscious body is gently arranged so his wife can lie alongside him and hold him in her arms as he dies; and the agitated old man whose final days are calmed by the simple act of turning his bed to face the window - that stay with you long after the final page is turned.

Chief amongst them is her unflinching telling of her adored father’s final days, spent at home with his family around him, just as he wanted. It is impossibly moving and a beautiful, tear-jerking tribute to the man whose example and mentoring are pivotal to the doctor his daughter has become. And a reminder of why we need more doctors like her fighting for death to be better served by a system that is constructed to preserve life at any cost.

I’ve written in the past about why I believe we should all talk about death more than we do (read about my experience of going to a Death Cafe in order to do just that HERE). I appreciate I’m hardly breaking news when I say it’s the one certainty we ALL share, and yet it’s almost always a subject that’s considered too depressing/mawkish/uncomfortable (delete as appropriate) to discuss. This beautiful, important book may just be the perfect prompt for those conversations. And the perfect perspective on how death enables us to live ‘our one wild precious life’ with all the joy we can squeeze out of it.

‘Everything he had always loved about life was still there to be loved,’ Rachel writes about her father’s terminal cancer diagnosis. ‘only more attentively now, more fiercely. All that had changed was the new sense of urgency, the need to savour each day and its sweetness.’

You’ll find information about other brilliant books about life and death in THIS blog