When Breath Becomes Air! (Book Review)

Death follows birth (slowly may be, but surely).

We’re no strangers to this fact and yet we laugh, we cry, we fight, we run, we dream, we fly, we love, we hate, we push some down, we raise others up, we rejoice, we regret, we LIVE until we die.

How would you feel when you’re holding a promising book that suggests being at least of a thousand pages however by the 40th page you see a hint that suggests the book would end on page 60 and by reaching page 50, you know for sure that it really is ending on 60 and the rest of the pages have ‘the END’ printed in big, bold, black letters filling the whole page?  (Answer: Cheated / Disappointed / Fooled / Angry / Broken / Silenced / Nothing)

Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon, was gifted one such rigged book. He too, like everyone else, believed in ‘work hard now, and you can relax and reap the fruits of this hard work later’.

Well, he worked hard, really hard, straining hours continuously bent over slit bodies trying to find a way to save a life, and when the fruits were ripening enough, a dark cloud engulfed his life and drained him off it mercilessly.

We all know we’ll die, we (most of us) just do not know when. We just believe it is not in the near foreseeable future and so ignore it altogether.

When you’ve been a doctor, dealing with patients, problems, lives; a neurosurgeon, who has been in the very rooms where you’ve witnessed life and death countless times, knowing that there is one more life which is halved could’ve just been one another case in the hundreds you’ve done paperwork for.

But, when it is your life that is halved, how do you face it? How COULD you face it?

Then, after the bargaining, came flashes of anger: “I work my whole life to get to this point, and then you give me cancer?”

As a doctor, I knew not to declare “Cancer is a battle I’m going to win!” or ask “Why me?” (Answer: Why not me?)

Paul was neither foolishly brave to deny that he is going to die soon nor was he silenced by it.

Given only a few years to live, he altered his choices in life.  A comfortable life, with less working hours, enough money, settling down for good with a comfortable retirement plan would be one choice we all prefer if given one.

Paul, at the age of 34, being denied this choice, chose to accept the unfairness of life and decided to live life with simpler (unthinkable for many of us) options.

He chose to write a book, have a child, live peacefully (to the extent possible) and depart so.

A life balanced between nihilism and optimism. He quotes how ‘coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything.’

Speaking from his grave where the heads of the tulips and flowers left behind are eaten away by deer today, Paul prepares us to be not disappointed come what may and live on.

Life has always been unfair for many and by not accepting it we simply make fools of ourselves and by hating it we just ruin not just ours but that of everyone around us.

While reading the book, when Paul inhales and then releases one last, deep, final breath when Breath becomes Air, we return to our normal lives but we do not feel as normal as we used to until then.