Diary of death provides insight into life

In early 2005, Eleanor Clift’s husband and partner for more than 20 years, journalist Tom Brazaitis, slipped into the final stages of a losing battle with kidney cancer. As he lay dying in the hospital bed that had been set up in the living room of their Washington, D.C., home, the Terri Schiavo right-to-life case was playing out on a national stage in Florida. Tom and Terri would die just one day apart, but their final weeks could not have been more different.

In an intimate and deeply touching memoir, Clift recounts the death of both her husband and Terri Schiavo, as observed from two very different vantage points, one personal and the other professional. Clift, a contributing editor for Newsweek magazine and a regular panelist on the nationally syndicated show “The McLaughlin Group,” shared evenings with her husband. Her days were spent writing and discussing on national TV the furor that erupted over Schiavo’s fate.

Written in the form of daily diary entries beginning on March 17, 2005, and ending March 31, 2005, the day of Terri Schiavo’s death and one day after Tom’s, Clift’s memoir touches on many basic issues.

For example, she reveals how her life with Tom was changed by his diagnosis, and in many ways it deepened their affection for each other. She documents her experiences with hospice care and how to best cope with dying. She also questions the role, if any, that government should play in end-of-life decisions.

Clift believes that death is a part of life, and worthy of the same honesty and humor we accord all milestones. Her remarkable memoir will help us see this milestone in a much more inspiring and thoughtful way.