Recommended Reading: Chasing Daylight

When Eugene O’Kelly was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor, he resolved to make the last 100 days of his life the best he’d ever experienced and in the process he took a few notes. The result, Chasing Daylight, manages to be both a touching memoir and a guide to dying. 

As he pulls together what he wants out of his last three months, O’Kelly decides to run the end of his life in the same way he ran his company as CEO—he makes a to-do list:

• Get legal and financial affairs in order
• Unwind relationships
• Simplify
• Live in the moment
• Create (but also be open to) great moments, "perfect moments"
• Begin transition to next state
• Plan funeral

While O’Kelly fixes his sights on finishing his life with contentment and acceptance, he’s also eager to talk about his struggles: “When I aimed to be fully conscious and in the moment, I often had trouble keeping my mind from wandering to the future or the past. I got angry. Frequently I cried. Occasionally I got obsessed. I experienced repeated failure at what I was trying to do. But not once did I regret that I had exercised control over my life, the final and most precious inches of my life, for the last real time I was able to.”

O’Kelly is absolutely unflinching as he describes his life coming to a close, he ruminates on the milestones he’ll miss in his young daughter’s life, the retirement he won’t get with his wife. He laments all those years he spent assuming he’d have far more than fifty-three years, but he also describes himself as “blessed” and swears that he’s been given a gift with the last few months.

“I hoped to make it a positive experience for those around me, as well as the best three months of my life.” And he does. Chasing Daylight could have easily been a good memoir on dying from someone in the process—after all, it’s a unique perspective on a subject that doesn’t get enough calm, reasoned thought, but O’Kelly goes deeper. In this way Chasing Daylight is a book unlike any you’ve read. It’s not for everyone. To read this book you have to be willing to think about your own death and, the death of your loved ones, but if you’re ready for that, you’ll receive a remarkable gift of your own: you will have a reinvented, and downright inspired, perspective on what dying can and should be.

Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life 
by Eugene O'Kelly
160 pp. McGraw-Hill, 2005