Late Fragments (Kate Gross)
On Oct 11th, 2012, Kate Gross is running along a beach in South California to raise money for her charity. She’s in her 30s, married to the man of her dreams, mom to adorable twin boys. She will soon be told she has terminal cancer. The diagnosis is what spurs Gross to pick up her pen and begin writing, which she likens to “salvaging something beautiful from the wreckage of our lives.” She writes to share the sum of her life – she writes to create something even while her body is self-destructing.
Late Fragments is a memoir that goes deep into questions of mortality. Other end-of-life memoirs, like The Last Lecture (Randy Pausch), Mortality (Christopher Hitchens), and Dying: A Memoir (Cory Taylor) address death like bookends – a bit at the front and a bit at the back. But Late Fragments is an end-of-life memoir that is truly about coming to terms with mortality. Gross reflects on what it’s like to be told you’re going to die, living with the uncertainty of a terminal illness, grieving for your lost future, the prospect of ceasing to be, what it’s like to consider who you are when your job and productivity (the things that helped define you) have been stripped away, etc.
In other words, she goes there.
Two passages that I appreciated as an atheist:
“I am not afraid of ceasing to be. I am not pre-occupied with what it means to be dead – there was a time when I was nothing, and there will be a time when I am nothing again. Our little lives are rounded with a sleep: first the sleep of a newborn, then the sleep of the dying. I am not scared of that drowsiness, nor am I consumed by thinking about what it will be like. As someone said to me, your day isn’t defined by the moments before you drift off. It is the part when you are awake that counts.”
And:
“I am fascinated by the faith people have that there is something concrete there to look forward to. But my fascination covers my lack of comprehension; I struggle with those who tell me that they really, truly believe in a heaven. I struggle not because of the leap of faith it requires, but because I fail to see how anything anywhere else could be better than what we have right here, right now. . . Frankly, I prefer my intellectually incoherent view of nothingness-with-benefits.
What Gross wants you to know is not to waste your time. “Chase your happiness. Chase it down till you know who you are, because time past can also be time present, and those same things which once burnished your life can do it again.” Pay attention to what matters, and let everything else be garnish. Indulge in the present. Notice the tulips in your garden. Appreciate things properly while you have the chance and pay attention to the wonder all around you.