When Breath Becomes Air

This excerpt describes Kalanithi's memoir perfectly:

” He wanted to help people understand death and face their mortality. Dying in one's fourth decade is unusual now, but dying is not. “The thing about lung cancer is that it's not exotic,” Paul wrote in an email to his best friend, Robin. “It's just tragic enough and just imaginable enough. [The reader] can get into these shoes, walk a bit, and say, ‘So that's what it looks like from here...sooner or later I'll be back here in my own shoes.' That's what I'm aiming for, I think. Not the sensationalism of dying, and not exhortations to gather rosebuds, but: Here's what lies up ahead on the road.” Of course, he did more than just describe the terrain. He traversed it bravely. “

Everyone involved had a truly wonderful way with words and I will, indeed, be crying for the next week or so.