Chasing Daylight

This special book talks about how Eugene O' Kelly, ex-CEO of KPMG, came to know about his brain cancer and his "management of the path to death".

The first part of the book introduced how he came to know about his suffering of the cancer. He stressed that he was a healthy man. He then wrote about the illness and the treatment. Then it turned sharply to describe how he decided not to take the treatment such as chemotherapy etc which would make him weak. So the trade-off was either to length his life to about 1-2 years with therapy but end up with a very weak body or not to take any intrusive treatment but can only to live for about 3 months.

He was glad that he chose not to have treatment but had a stronger body so that he could do things that he planned: preparing to leave this world.

The rest of the book described in great details how he carried out his plan and this is the most touching part of the book as he described how he would end his relationship with family, friends and business partners by different means: meeting in nature, phone call, writing and etc. This is not ordinary hospital visit but he carefully thought about those who would continue to live. What's the best way to say goodbye? Revisited an enjoyable moment in the past, significant event, wrote about how he would think of his friends.

And last but not least, he could write a book to describe all these together with his wife. His wife wrote at the end of the book the significance of this for their daughter: 浑浑噩噩过日子就不算真正活着，漫不经心地生活，对这个世界、对自己都没有好处。

This reminds me a lifestyle that I don't subscribe to. Some youngsters like to "hea" whenever there is free time or choose to not having a direction, or give up too quickly. I recommend this book to everyone.

ISBN 986-124-664-9
Chinese edition