Before I Say Goodbye: Recollections and Observations from One Woman's Final Year - Softcover

Picardie, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805066128 ISBN 13: 9780805066128

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks, 2000

Synopsis

By turns humorous and heart-rending, an unforgettable account of a young woman's spiritual triumphs over breast cancer in the last year of her life

Ruth Picardie was only thirty-three when she died, a month after her twins' second birthday and just under a year after she was first diagnosed with breast cancer. For Ruth, a journalist, it seemed natural to write about her illness. She published only five columns for Observer Life magazine before she became too sick to continue, but her moving, funny, and very human account drew a huge response from readers all over England.

Before I Say Goodbye juxtaposes these columns with correspondence from readers, e-mails to her friends, letters to her children, and reflections by her husband and her sister. The result is a courageous and moving book, entirely devoid of self-pity, that celebrates the triumph of a brave and wonderful woman's spirit. An international bestseller in England, Picardie's sobering yet ultimately life-affirming book is destined to become a classic.

About this title

About the Author

Ruth Picardie was raised and educated in London, Oxford, and Cardiff, England. She studied social anthropology at Cambridge University. After graduation, she worked as an editor and freelance writer for numerous magazines and newspapers. A happily married mother of twins, she was diagnosed with breast cancer at age thirty-two. She died in September of 1997.

Reviews

In 1997 at the age of 32, journalist Picardie died of an aggressive cancer (originally misdiagnosed) that began in her breast and spread to her bones, liver and brain, killing her within 10 months. Her career was in full swing when she was diagnosed, and her twin children were just one year old. This collection contains her final journalistic workDcolumns about her illness written for London's Observer Life magazineDas well as letters to and from her friends, readers and children, plus an essay by her husband documenting the weeks before her death, when she was too ill to write. All this is as heartbreaking as it sounds, but is made bearable by Picardie's lively record of her efforts to live as long and well as possible, bravely drawing on British traditions of humor and stoicism. Her writing reveals a woman who, despite her anger and grief, remains open to life's joys and observes what is happening around her with clear eyes. Her writing is fresh and funny and displays so much pop culture savoir faire that comparisons to Bridget Jones (a character she enjoyed) are inevitable. Picardie documents the foul-weather friends who appear when they learn of her illness, her ongoing battles with her weight and the only beneficial therapy she discovers: spending wads of money on makeup and clothing. Still, without turning maudlin, she recognizes the serious nature of her condition and gently reminds her readers that life is precarious and precious. To finish this deeply personal account is to lose a friend and to celebrate her ultimately triumphant life. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A sassy, brutally frank, and mercifully brief memoir of a British journalist's 1997 decline and death by breast cancer, supplemented by e-mails and recollections from her family and friends.At 32, a year after giving birth to twins, London Observer columnist Picardie discovered that a lump on her breast, previously diagnosed as a benign cyst, had become virulently malignant. Within months she learned that the cancer, which defied chemotherapy and less conventional treatments, had spread to her bones, lungs, and brain--and would soon kill her. After some soul-searching, she decided to write a column about her final days that would apply her flair for colloquial confession and shock humor (you ram a carrot up the arse of the next person who advises you to start drinking homeopathic frogs urine) to the messy agony of dying young. Expecting to be made thin by nauseating chemotherapy treatments, she was surprised when the steroids she was prescribed made her fat. Lashing out at patronizing acquaintances, clueless physicians, quack nostrums, and New Age gurus (referring to Andrew Weill, she snarls that books by men with facial hair are not for me), she finds solace in binge eating and spending lavishly on expensive makeup (My non-beard book, Shop Yourself Out of Cancer, is coming soon). So much fire-breathing sarcasm in the five short columns she managed to complete is balanced by confessions of terror, disgust, and lingering sadness (for herself and her children both) in various e-mails she exchanged with a female cancer sufferer and a man diagnosed with AIDS. Additional essays from her sister Justine and husband Matt Seaton portray Picardie as a complicated woman of uncommon brilliance and strength.A slim but worthy addition to the literature of terminal illness. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

British journalist Picardie was diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer when she was 32, not long after the birth of twins, Lola and Jack. This book is comprised of columns about her illness that she wrote for Observer Life, a magazine edited by Picardie's sister Justine. Also included here are e-mail correspondence with three close friends (one a man with HIV) where no holds are barred and no subject is taboo (though British epithets still seem so much more polite than American vulgarity). The writing in the messages and the columns is frank and raw, as raw as the open wound of a mastectomy. Though Picardie avoided that surgery, she suffered the ravages of chemotherapy, radiation, and steroids, plus the optimistic complementary therapies to which she tied her hopes. The treatments ultimately failed to save her; she died less than a year after her diagnosis. This short book also includes an afterword from her husband, Matt Seaton, that puts her final days in perspective of those who loved her most. Picardie's dry humor and pointed barbs should give pause to others facing terminal illness and their friends and families. Recommended for public libraries.DBette-Lee Fox, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

After Picardie's death, her husband and sister compiled her e-mail correspondence, columns she had written for a London magazine, and letters from readers to come up with this slim volume recording her last year. Picardie was 33 and an active writer with two-year-old twins when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She began writing a column on it for Observer Life, and managed to publish only five moving, painful, darkly comedic pieces on everything from her general health and treatments to her sudden expensive habit of buying piles of glamorous makeup before she died. Her fear at the unexpected and devastating disease peeps through only occasionally, overshadowed more often by her courage and wit. It is difficult to follow the e-mail correspondences because her friends' letters are not always included, but the intent is not necessarily to see day-to-day interactions. Her communications reveal what an amazingly strong woman she was. Ellie Barta-Moran
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Before I Say Goodbye: The future will get on just fine without me. OK, so Matt never waters the garden, which means the wisteria is hardly likely to make the next century. Plus, he never gets up in the night to put blankets back on the kids, but nobody ever died of cold in a centrally heated house. Otherwise, I think life will continue just fine. It's just that I'll miss it so.

Edition details

• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805066128
• ISBN 13: 9780805066128
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128