Uncategorized 
Comments Off on Mortality Mortality
One of my book groups picked Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End a couple of months ago, although it took me several weeks to move through the hold list at the library; when I started it I was fascinated but busy, and since I couldn’t up the speed much because of some of the vocabulary, I ran out of time and it was automatically returned when I was only half done. Since then I’d been diligently waiting for it to come in again–it’s a popular book–until a week ago, and it remained SO fascinating that I finished the rest of it in less than a week. My sister and my friend Britt have both read it as well, and we all agree that it’s ridiculously good. It talks about nursing homes and elder care and their evolution, about how we as a society deal with terminal illness, and about what doctors can and can’t do as well as do and don’t do. You know those kinds of books that you keep telling stories from to the people you live with? This is one of those books. (Just ask my husband.) I actually ordered a copy of it for us after finishing it, because A) it has some important things in it that I’d like to remember and B) books this good deserve to have the sales to prove it. If anyone in your life is aging or facing a serious (or terminal) illness, Being Mortal is an absolute must read.
Seriously.
In other news on the mortality front, I learned today that my old boss from my college days passed away this year. Dennis Bollschweiler was a father to me when my own father lived thousands of miles away and I needed one; he was fiercely loving, sometimes crotchety, a hard worker, and a brave man. He had a red face and a white mustache, and his loss fills me with sadness for those of us who loved him and with gratitude for the gospel and the Plan of Salvation–in other words, for our Savior Jesus Christ.
Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
ris’n with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
born that man no more may die,
born to raise the sons of earth,
born to give them second birth.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”