In this article (or is it more like story?), I would like to try to spill word by word from my own thought and opinion about a book that was really fascinating. It bring you a point of view of somebody that get cancer and only have short time for living and the special thing about this book is, it’s a true story. The title is Lessons for The Living by Stan Goldberg.
Stan Goldberg was a professor in San Francisco State University, mastered in speech pathology and he got prostate cancer (in 1 to 9 of cancer score, he got 7 so it was a deadly cancer). If you read the book, you’ll be brought the stories of how deference the author see the world before and after he being declared with cancer.
After the author had been sentencing to have cancer, of course, it was really hard for stan. I mean, he had everything and then the cancer took it from him. And then something happen to him. He ‘accidentally’ pulled to be a volunteer. What kind of volunteer? not an ordinary volunteer, but someone that need to stay and keep up with the people that only have short time to live, or in other world, someone that dying… and at this point the story became more intersting…
He found out that he loved being a volunteer, not because it made him more prepared to die, but because he felt alive when he try to help dying people to be as happy as possible. And also he got a lot of live lessons both from the people who about to die and from the death it self.
Even though the author ‘prized’ with 7th score of prostate cancer, which was very dangerous, the author still can be lived for years to have experience witnessed hundreds of death itself. From an old man or woman, till teenager. As a volunteer he made a bond with dying people, and somehow (maybe because his major degree), he was be able to become a likeable volunteer by most of the dying people.
The stories went from one death story to the others. It was really interesting, I mean, the author describe the situation with really good, it made us feel being present at the time, watching how dead taking the life from the people. How they were tortured by their past mistakes and unfinished hope. How dying people tend to try to solve their problem with the other people. and how death changed them little by little ’till the death arrived.
As the reader, I recommend this book to be read if you want to be more intimate with your life by learning from the death.
SEE YOU ON TOP
BIG DREAM
Firman Ramadhani 