All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam ToewsMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I have a lousy memory, so not many books stick with me for years, other than a general “I liked it” feeling. But this one has. It was such a powerful, moving, exploration of love and the difficult decisions involved in whether or not to help a loved one living in chronic pain die. It is particularly poignant and difficult in the case explained in this story, because the pain is due to mental illness. When somebody has been diagnosed with an incurable, deadly, disease it is (for some of us) easy to support a decision they may make to end their lives now rather than suffer for longer. But we struggle with the issue of mental illness, because we know that it won’t physically destroy the body of its own accord. That leaves us room to keep hoping that somehow a cure will be found. And yet, despite the fact that drugs can help many people with mental illnesses, we also see that in many cases they don’t work, and medicine is at a loss. Is it fair to make someone keep suffering on the off-chance some new combination of meds and therapy might help them? How many years can you expect them to continue? Not easy questions.
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