The Mercy Papers

I'm reading a stunning memoir right now by Robin Romm, which describes the final three weeks of her mother's life before she succumbed to breast cancer in 2004. It was named a top ten non-fiction book by Entertainment Weekly, and was also named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times. Although it may not be the most positive and uplifting story, it has opened my eyes and made me realize how cancer impacts a family at the most personal level.

"And then there is this fact, too- a fact I can't decipher. My mother told me that she asked my father to list the things he will miss about her when she is gone. My father refused to answer.

'

Why?' She asked

'Jackie, stop.' He said...

I can imagine what my mother wants him to say. She wants him to remember the big red tent they had on their honeymoon, the one with the shaded porch and walls for different rooms. She wants him to remember her sleeping in the sun on a grassy Swiss hillside. The sunburn she got in Mexico. She wants him to say he will miss the dinners, the salads with cucumbers, scallions, and tomatoes cut into wedges and the way she became irritated deveining shrimp. She wants him to remember her twenty year old skin, unblemished from surgeries and needles. The warm days after I was born and they felt like they were the only ones in the world that ever created a baby. She wants a catalog of trips they took, the daily comedies...The are a million moments that will end the day she dies and she wants this acknowledged. She wants him to imagine the empty bed. And she wants him to appreciate that it's not yet empty. But my father cannot meet her there, no matter how much she asks, cries, balls her fists. 'Why do you have to keep on with this?' he says."

For a better book review: http://arjunpuri.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/32/