I wanted to read Stan Goldberg's book for numerous reasons. The most important, I think, is because his story parallels my own. We both have the same kind of cancer, we both have a poor prognosis, we both have lessons to learn.  I know Stan learned his and I think I'm well on the way, in a great part due to his book. This is not a book to be taken lightly, nor one to be read to pass a summer's day. This is one to read in order to change how you plan on living out the rest of your days. He is not sidelined by desires for sympathy. In fact, that's the least thing on his mind. His first chore, his first lesson, is to learn how to help others die. And so he volunteers in hospice. Their teachings become his lessons.

You don't have to be dying from cancer to find this book valuable. You just have to be dying from lack of life. I've often said we live our lives by example and as example. The people he sits with provided both—examples for him to live by and examples to avoid. And the lessons he learned become the title—stories of forgiveness, gratitude, and courage. But most of all, he learned the purpose of his journey with the dying was not to prepare them for death. "The purpose of the journey had always been to prepare my family for my own death." It may be cancer that kills him. It may be cancer that kills me. But it won't be a death from a lack of life.