Letting Her Go

I've been reading Will Schwalbe's The End of Your Life Book Club since January. It is taking me a long time to read.

Why?

Most profoundly, I've enjoyed reading this one in courses, taking the time to digest what I've read before tasting more. Schwalbe's sentiments on reading and being someone's child are especially thought provoking. For example, from pages 31-2:

"These two books showed us that no matter where Mom and I were on our individual journeys, we could still share books, and while reading those books, we wouldn't be the sick person and the well person; we would simply be a mother and a son entering new worlds together."

I love to enter new worlds together with others. George R. R. Martin with my brothers. John Sandford with my dad. Classic novels and Shakespeare plays with my students. Current hot writing, old favorites, and global/historical novels with my book club. Nonfiction with my own mother. It's my favorite part of reading, entering a new world. And to do so with others is icing on the cake.

But, of course, I always feel guilty reading-for-pleasure when there is reading-for-work (editing, scoring) to be done. And as soon as the pile of student essays and such becomes manageable, it grows again like mold. Noxious, stifling mold. This is not only why the Schwalbe has been slow going, but to a great degree the reason SPOTD volume 3 is on the back burner despite my hopes that I'd be able to finish it by January 1, 2013.

Finally, and perhaps most subtly, there is the book itself. I'm not willing to let Mrs. Schwalbe go. I'm pretty sure that hospice is a few turns of the page away for the fierce mother, grandmother, activist, and all-around amazing lady. If I stop now, she can continue her fight against pancreatic cancer and never succumb.

This is not my first time hesitating to approach a climax. While I'm perfectly happy to continue reading Romeo and Juliet beyond 3.4's morning of nightingales and larks, letting them stumble their way toward their dooms, I remember a book (though not the title) where the romantic couple were blissfully happy, and I left them honeymooning in Italy for almost a year because I knew the sweetness would be short lived without my intervention.

Sigh.