Sometimes I see a book mentioned that I really, really want to read/review, then when it arrives I find myself shy of reading it. What if it doesn’t live up to my hopes and expectations? What if it’s just not that good? And it takes me a little while to dig into it, just in case.
This was one of those books. I’d taken it on two camping trips and not got round to starting it, but when I finally did get started, I read it in a day. Yes, it’s that kind of book.
Randy Pausch is someone you may have heard of. If not, set aside an hour, google the last lecture and watch it. This book won’t make a huge amount of sense if you don’t do that first. Because while Jai Pausch shows herself here as utterly a person in her own right, and with a story worthy of telling, it is as yin to her late husband’s yang that the stories work together. She is a widow and has a tale of loss and pain, but it’s because she had her magic man and lost him that she has so much to share with us.
I’m not trying to diminish her, on the contrary. I think it probably required an extraordinary amount of character to be someone who could live with, love and ultimately lose someone like Randy Pausch, and then still carry on, raising three young children as a single parent *and* working for cancer awareness and caregiver awareness programs afterwards. I take my hat off to her, completely. She tells her story simply and without maudlin emotion, nevertheless, I was in tears for the first time by page 31.
There’s a clarity and simplicity to her telling of the somewhat relentless experience of watching someone you love die of cancer. You know there’s going to be no happy ending but you can’t help rooting for them throughout anyway. Even knowing that this is real life, and there are no miracle cures, the normality of raising children has to go on around the medical traumas and I think that might be why this book is so powerful. Jai has normal concerns, normal hopes and normal dreams, and she fights to keep some parts of those alive for her children, without drama but with utter dedication.
Would I recommend this book? Absolutely. Powerful, moving, simple, and full of love – Jai Pausch is an amazing person, as a mother, as a widow, as a wife and as herself.
Disclosure: received free for the purposes of review. All opinions remain my own.
Leave a Reply