“The End of Your Life Book Club”

Really, whenever you read something wonderful, it changes your life, even if you aren’t aware of it.

Mary Anne Schwalbe has just returned from a humanitarian trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan when she is diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer which is almost always fatal within months. Unwilling to give up, Mary Anne decides to fight and seeks treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, where she lives with her husband, Douglas. Her adult son, Will Schwalbe accompanies his mother to her chemotherapy sessions where they pass the hours reading and discussing books they’ve read or are reading. The End of Your LIfe Book Club is Will Schwalbe’s account of the last two years of his mother’s life and how two people – a mother and a son – used books to share, discuss, and disclose their thoughts, feelings, and love for each other.

Will Schwalbe was raised by a compassionate woman who believed the ultimate gift is to give back. Mary Anne Schwalbe was a founder of the Women’s Refugee Commission and worked tirelessly to help refugees and make people aware of their plight. She was also an educator serving as the Director of Admissions at both Harvard and Radcliffe, and the Director of College Counseling at the Dalton School and the Head of the Upper School at Nightingale, both located in New York City.

In a time (the 1960’s) when most mothers stayed home – whether by choice or need – Mary Anne was able to have her career, a marriage, and raise three children although she freely acknowledges she was always tired and not immune from making mistakes. In one hilarious account, Will recalls how his mother in a state of exhaustion suddenly realizes she gave the dog her birth control pill and herself the dog’s de-worming pill. Throughout her life, Mary Anne believed that “people aren’t here for you; everyone is here for one another” and although her commitments tired her, she marched forward believing she could make a difference.

At the end of her life, Mary Anne was raising money to build a library in Afghanistan because she believed

books are the most powerful tool in the human arsenal, that reading all kinds of books, in whatever format you choose – electronic (even though that wasn’t for her) or printed, or audio – is the grandest entertainment, and also is how you take part in the human conversation…….you can make a difference in the world and…books really do matter: they’re how we know what we need to do in life, and how we tell others.

Will and Mary Anne didn’t consciously create a book club at the beginning of Mary Anne’s journey through cancer treatment. Reading had always been a big part of both their lives and during the long hours at the hospital, they both found comfort in passing the time with a book in hand or talking about a book they read. Will comes to understand that books  “reminded us that no matter where Mom and I were on our individual journeys, we could still share books, and while reading these 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.”

In retrospect, Will “came to realize that the greatest gift of our book club was that it gave me time and opportunity to ask her things, not tell her things.” Mary Anne taught her son that “reading isn’t the opposite of doing; it’s the opposite of dying” – an important distinction. Through their shared love of books, Will learns even more about his mother and revisits the life lessons she strived to instill in him and his siblings.  The End of Your Life Book Club is the compassionate story of a mother through the eyes of a son who realizes “the thing about our book club is that we’ve really been in it all our lives.“