Uplifting book about living tells us to enjoy today

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

William Safire, the New York Times' resident expert in the use of the English language, made a mistake last week. He wrote: "The last time a dying man ran for president of the U.S. was in 1944."

This is not true. Franklin Roosevelt WAS dying when he ran in 1944, but so is every man who is running for president now. We are all dying from the moment we are born. We don't like to think about this, but death is our destiny. None of us knows when or how or where we'll die. We don't come with guarantees or promises. We simply are until we are not. To quote an Elton John’s song, we are all "candles in the wind."

Safire's sentence might have snuck past me if I hadn't the day before received in the mail a small gem of a book, "Carpe Diem - Enjoying Every Day With a Terminal Illness," by Dorchester journalist, Ed Madden. I get a lot of books in the mail and I look at all of them, but few keep my attention.

This one did.

"I have just entered upon a new adventure, the most exciting, challenging, spirited experience of all my 53 years," Madden writes in his first essay. "I've discovered I have cancer.

"Of course, had I been given the choice of a weekend with Kathleen Turner, a sailing trip to Bermuda or cancer, the ailment would most definitely not have won out. But, as in so many of the other wonderful things that have happened to me - my birth, choice of parents and siblings, my rearing in Boston, my schooling, my magnificent body and looks, the choice was not mine."

I liked this man instantly, liked his attitude and read his book without putting it down.

Madden originally wrote the 37 essays in "Carpe Diem" for "The Reporter," a Dorchester paper for which he is a columnist. They cover a year-and-a-half of his life with terminal cancer. But they cover far more than cancer.

His readers urged him to compile his writings. They found strength, hope, joy, humor and deep faith in his words. Madden's reflections and insights touched them in a way they needed to be touched. And so he published the 88-page book, which is available through the American Cancer Society.

Everyone should read it, not just people with cancer, because the book isn't about dying. It's about living.

"I'm going to have a dandy time today, and every day I'm given," he writes in an early essay. "I'm going to enjoy every aspect of my job, because I can do it again, and still, and without the pain that plagued me months ago. I'm going to take pleasure in the weather, whatever it is, simply because I have it. I'm going to revel in the scenery, whether mountain or sandhill, river or gutter, castle or hovel, simply because it's there."

Madden's book is uplifting. "No one will get out of this world alive," he says without rancor.

"The arrival of a serious illness does not change our direction, but only heightens the adventure," he muses.

"I love to garden," he tells his readers. "Each spring as I take tiny seeds from their envelopes and place them in the soil, I marvel at the complexity and beauty of the process. Small and simple looking as they are, the seeds contain all the information and genes to produce a wonderful tomato or a beautiful zinnia. But in the process, the seed itself dies."

What a wonderful analogy. What comfort to think that all we are now can't compare with all that we will be.

Madden heard a reading at a friend's funeral, which he relates.

"It compared death to a sailing ship passing from us to the horizon. The ship is in no way diminished because it grows smaller in our eyes. It is only we who suffer loss from its absence. But just as we say `There it goes,' on the other side of the water are those who say, `Here it comes."'

Enjoy the trip is Madden's message. Carpe diem. Enjoy today.