Irvin D. Yalom - A Matter of Death and Life

Praise for A Matter of Death and Life

For over half a century, the eminent psychiatrist Irvin Yalom has dazzled the world with his stories of the human psyche packed with wisdom, insight, and humor. Now, with stunning candor and courage, he shares with us the most difficult experience of his life: the loss of his wife and steadfast companion since adolescence. Partners to the end, including in the co-writing of this book, they share an indelible portrait of bereavementthe terror, pain, denial, and reluctant acceptance. But what we are left with is much more than a profound story of enduring lossits an unforgettable and achingly beautiful story of enduring love. I will be thinking about this for years to come.

Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

This beautiful, poignant, and uplifting memoir is a love story, a tale of two incredibly accomplished lives that were lived almost as one, the sum turning out to be so much greater than its parts. It will inspire you and perhaps move you to look differently at your lifeit did that for me.

Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone

The Yaloms are not just honest, but astonishingly generous with their readers. This book takes its immediate place in the canon of great end-of-life memoirs.

Caitlin Doughty, founder of The Order of the Good Death

A Matter of Death and Life is both a sweet reminiscence and a path to discovery. Two eminent professors, authors, and lifelong partners grapple with aging, fragility, and death. In the process of honestly meeting the precariousness of life, they come to a deeper appreciation of its preciousness.

Frank Ostaseski, author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

A Matter of Death and Life is so much more than a book. It is an indefatigable love story. It is a text that traverses past and present. It is exquisite, candid, and vulnerableabsent the too-common defenses of artifice and pomposityas it approaches the untenable pain of separation and unyielding yearning of loss. Every person would benefit from multiple readings of this intelligently relatable book, both to confront dying as we inch toward our own mortality and, perhaps more importantly, the grief when one so beloved precedes us in death. I am deeply enriched for having absorbed this intimate narrative, as I wipe the tears from my eyes. Irv and Marilyns love story, ending in the tragedy of endings, is yours, mine, and all of ours.

Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, author of Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

This is a remarkable bookas remarkable as its authors, Irv Yalom, the master existential therapist and widely read author, and Marilyn Yalom, an accomplished scholar and writer. Summoning immense courage, the Yaloms co-write the story of their emotional and moral caregiving for each other. A Matter of Death and Life is the culmination of the Yaloms career-long quests for wisdom in the art of living and dying. It is a book that transforms the readerI couldnt put it down.

Arthur Kleinman, author of The Soul of Care: The Moral Education of a Husband and Doctor

A MATTER OF Death and Life

Irvin D. Yalom & Marilyn Yalom

REDWOOD PRESS

Stanford, California

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Stanford, California

2021 by Irvin D. Yalom and Marilyn Yalom. All rights reserved. Epigraph by Rabbi Sanford Ragins, originally published in Lchol Zman vEi: For Sacred Moments New Rabbis Manual, CCAR Press, 2015 by Sanford Ragins. Reprinted with permission.

Excerpt from Let Evening Come by Jane Kenyon from Collected Poems. Copyright 2005 by The Estate of Jane Kenyon. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company LLC on behalf of Graywolf Press, graywolfpress.org.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Yalom, Irvin D., 1931-author. | Yalom, Marilyn, author.

Title: A matter of death and life / Irvin D. Yalom and Marilyn Yalom.

Description: Stanford, California : Redwood Press, 2021.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020035303 (print) | LCCN 2020035304 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503613768 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503627772 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Yalom, Irvin D., 1931-| Yalom, MarilynHealth. | Yalom, MarilynDeath and burial. | PsychiatristsUnited StatesBiography. | Spouses of cancer patientsUnited StatesBiography. | Multiple myelomaPatientsUnited StatesBiography. | Terminally illUnited StatesBiography. | Women historiansUnited StatesBiography. | LCGFT: Autobiographies.

Classification: LCC RC339.52.Y35 A3 2021 (print) | LCC RC339.52.Y35 (ebook) | DDC 616.890092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035303

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035304

Cover design: Rob Ehle

Text design: Kevin Barrett Kane

Typeset at Stanford University Press in 11/15 Galliard Pro

Mourning is the price we pay for having the courage to love others.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

We both embarked on academic careers after postgraduate training at Johns Hopkins, where I had completed a residency in psychiatry and Marilyn obtained a PhD in comparative (French and German) literature. We were always each others first reader and editor. After I wrote my first book, a textbook on group therapy, I was awarded a writing fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation at the Bellagio Writing Center in Italy to work on my next book, Loves Executioner. Shortly after we arrived, Marilyn spoke to me about her growing interest in writing about womens recollections of the French Revolution, and I agreed that she had ample excellent material for a book. All of the Rockefeller scholars had been given an apartment and a separate writing studio, and I urged her to ask the director whether there might also be a writing studio for her. The director responded that a writing studio for a scholars spouse was an unusual request and, furthermore, all the studios in the main structure had already been assigned. But, after a few minutes of reflection, he offered Marilyn an unused tree house studio only a five-minute walk away in the adjoining forest. Delighted with it, Marilyn began work, with gusto, on her first book, Compelled to Witness: Womens Memoirs of the French Revolution. She was never happier. From that point on, we were fellow writers, and for the rest of her life, despite four children and full-time teaching and administrative positions, she matched me book for book.

In 2019, Marilyn was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells (antibody-producing white blood cells found in the bone marrow). She was placed on a chemotherapy drug, Revlimid, that precipitated a stroke, leading to an emergency room visit and four days in the hospital. Two weeks after she returned home, we took a brief walk in the park just a block from our home, and Marilyn announced, I have a book in mind that we should write together. I want to document the difficult days and months before us. Perhaps our trials will be of some use to other couples with one member facing a fatal illness.