She Came to Live Out Loud: An Inspiring Family Journey Through Illness, Loss, and Grief [Hardcover]

Myra MacPherson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 18, 1999

Acclaimed author and journalist Myra MacPherson takes the reader on a remarkably intimate journey into the world of Anna, a vibrant young woman, as she and her family live with dying. Threaded through this personal tapestry are vital information and guidance needed by each of us when struggling with great stress and grief. It teaches us all how to be stronger friends for those we love who have a limited time to live.

Anna was wise and witty, brave and boisterous MacPherson spent three years with her, her family and friends, you are there, experiencing the fun and laughter, anger and despair, remission and, yes, humor. Anna teaches us that a positive attitude can prolong life and how to live out loud until the last second.

MacPherson addresses common concerns:

* How families deal with young and teenage children of sick and dying parents

* How family and friends provide better caregiving support

* Why resilience, anger, and humor sustain us and why platitudes are odious

* The health field, why doctors avoid death and often ignore dying patients, and advice for change

* Grieving: how long it lasts, how and why men and women grieve differently, what grievers can do, and how friends can help

After Anna dies of breast cancer, you observe her husband, Jan, who learns how to grieve positively as he copes with both his pain and the struggles of a single parent raising two adolescents. There are lessons for everyone -- those confronting death for the first rime and those living on after loss. As technology allows us to live longer, most of us will experience the "abnormal normalcy" lived in the homes of the seriously ill. Ordinary daily routines commingle with the terror of waiting for the next medical report, the next stage, the next new hope.

At a time when most of us seek alternatives to the inhumanity of dying in impersonal institutions. Anna found her solution in her own home surrounded by loved ones assisted by hospice professionals. You are inside that home, a home filled with love and care. Ultimately her caregivers' grief was lessened knowing that they contributed to a palliative, pain-free ending.

She Came to Live Out Loud is a heartfelt tribute to the triumph of the human spirit in adversity. It reminds us that the capacity for love is what gives us the opportunity to live meaningful lives. It teaches us survivors that there is, eventually joy in remembering those who once gave so much to us that there is, indeed, love after death.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

MacPherson (The Power Lovers) brings more literary sophistication to her account of witnessing a dignified dying than Mitch Albom brought to his bestselling Tuesdays with Morrie. As a result, her book is less sentimental. It is also as concerned with the larger issues of how society treats disease and dying as it is with portraying the vitality of its subject, Anna Johannessen, a 40-year-old wife and mother of two preteen children, who battled breast cancer and lost. MacPherson writes that, after the death of her own mother, she became acutely aware of "an American paradox of insane proportions. We encounter loss and sorrow daily. And yet we collude in a pathological dance of denial that merely heightens the pain of grieving." Following Anna through the ups and downs of cancer treatment, MacPherson records, in great detail, conversations between Anna and her doctors, relatives, friends and counselors. She also interviews Anna directly, revealing her thoughts, feelings and worries at various stages of her disease. Deliberately forsaking journalistic objectivity, MacPherson occasionally gushes in her praise of Anna and her family, but she succeeds in bringing readers into the dying woman's intimate world and in conveying everyone's grief, which "begins at the moment of diagnosis." The book dwells on Anna's every experience with medical treatments, hospice care and relationships. If she sometimes gets bogged down in details, MacPherson deserves credit for going beyond mere uplift into the nitty gritty dailiness of living and dying with an awful disease.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Teacher and entrepreneur Anna Johannessen was 37 when first diagnosed with breast cancer; after a spirited, valiant eight- year battle with the disease, she died, leaving two children (ages 11 and 13), her husband, and legions of devoted friends. Journalist MacPherson (formerly of the Washington Post and the New York Times; Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation, 1984, etc.) was moved to write this account after suffering losses in her own family. She spent two years following the Johannessen family during Anna's illness and here chronicles their ordeal, beginning with the initial, shocking diagnosis (like more than 70 percent of women who develop breast cancer, Anna had no genetic or other high-risk factors) and ending with Anna's eventual peaceful death at home. As recounted here, Anna tried bravely to keep control over her illness and treatment, finding an oncologist with whom she was comfortable, exploring all treatment options, including those that were experimental (her husband, a biomedical researcher, helped immeasurably in keeping her regimens at the forefront of breast cancer treatment). MacPherson pauses frequently throughout to explore issues common to families facing a similar medical crisis: difficulty finding the most effective treatment, insurance foul-ups, masculine/feminine grieving styles, children's issues, how death actually approaches, and what support can be found from outside sources such as hospicesMacPherson draws on expert views as well as her own and the Johannessens experiences. Her close involvement with the family, however, leads to a sometimes awkward presentationneither an uninvolved observer nor an intimate, MacPherson is nonetheless far too involved to offer clear-eyed, straightforward advice. Families actively involved in a similar heartbreaking journey don't need to read of another family's painrather, they'll benefit more from some more succinct, well-organized help for day-to-day survival than is presented here. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (February 18, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684822644
• ISBN-13: 978-0684822648
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,973,152 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terminal cancer, a tape recorder, and some sensitive souls., August 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: She Came to Live Out Loud: An Inspiring Family Journey Through Illness, Loss, and Grief (Hardcover)

This is an unusually intimate portrait of an unusual woman dying of breast cancer. The author planned such a portrait before meeting any likely subject. Then she was introduced to Anna Johannessen and the wheels began to turn. Anna was an inveterately cheerful extrovert, ensconced in a loving circle of family and friends - a survivor of stage 1 breast cancer. Her life had been blessed up until the day it was discovered that her cancer had returned. She and her supporters then endured three years of a gradually failing struggle to buy her more time. MacPherson, instantly won by Anna's frank and appealing friendliness, came on board and followed the family through Anna's ordeal, her death, and the two years of grieving beyond. The choice of the title of this book, "she came to live out loud," I suspect is not simply inspired by Emile Zola's proclamation quoted on the flyleaf but by the fact that much of what appears in the book is transparently adapted from tape recorded sessions. We hear Anna's natural speech, complete with tacking back and forth, switching topics, qualifying, digressing into humorous asides or turning tearfully squeaky. Telling exchanges between members of her inner circle, moving sessions with her children's bereavement counselor, Dottie Ward-Wimmer, and spontaneous outpourings at her memorial service also appear. In reading the account, we become virtual eavesdroppers in the Johannessen household. The book is valuable from a dozen angles. The bereavement counselor's advice about children facing the death of a parent is exceptionally wise and comforting. The vignettes of Anna's treatment are informative and at times chilling. Discussions of timing the switch from aggressive treatment to palliative care are important to any caregiver to the terminally ill, and as is the detailed portrait of the dying process. Finally, the subject herself, Anna Johannessen, is an inspiration to stricken families and a range of cancer survivors. My only worry with readership is that for some women in Anna's shoes, badly in need of the inspiration she might offer, Anna may appear too brave, too loved, to surrounded by caring supporters, in a word not enough like themselves to turn to for comfort. Plus the fact that, despite everything, she dies. Nonetheless I would recommend it to the full range of potential readers.

[In the following excerpts, Anna and Dottie Ward-Wimmer discuss whether her dying at home will make home a traumatic place for the children] Anna: "Once I'm in morphine land, I'll be pretty whacked out. I just don't want to traumatize them. I think it's going to be bad enough." Dottie [taking deep breath]: "Kids are traumatized by things they don't understand, by things they can't participate in - that they have to stand there and watch and they can't do anything about. ...Children are not necessarily traumatized [by experiencing dying]. I've worked with literally hundreds of families that have made these kinds of choices and when the decision is one that's made by all of you together, it's perfectly appropriate. ... And in terms of a memory of you being bloated or not - again, those kinds of stark pictures that you view are sudden drastic shocks. Like when the last time they saw you, you were fine and healthy in tennis shorts... But they're looking at you every day. They're not looking at you physically. They're looking in your eyes. They're cuddling up to you. They don't know whether they're laying on a boob or on a rib. They're laying on Mommy." Anna: "I never even thought about that. They've been wonderful, like when I can't get out of bed, they love to feed me dinner. They call me 'baby bird.' 'Feed the baby bird.' Ellery, I've used that boy to walk. He's said, 'Here, Mom, lean on me.' And I've been able to support myself with my son, my eleven-year-old kid, holding me up." Dottie: "That's good for them; allowing them to help is very important. It's a terrible feeling to be shut out."... Anna: "I never thought...all I kept thinking about was all they'll see and how they won't be able to go in the room and they'll start to hate the house because I died there." Dottie: "Talk to them about it. Again, you're a creative family - are you kidding? You'll do it in the garage if that's what's right."

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A touching book about a brave woman's struggle with cancer, April 22, 1999

By 

Nicoline Smits (Ellicott City, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: She Came to Live Out Loud: An Inspiring Family Journey Through Illness, Loss, and Grief (Hardcover)

Myra MacPherson's book about Anna Johannessen and her family is the most moving and most inspiring story about how she and her friends and family deal with her terminal illness I've ever read. It's an inspiration to deal with death and dying much more openly and honestly than people usually do and at the same time a stinging indictment of the insensitivity of the medical establishment and the health insurance industry. "She came to live out loud" touches the heart without being a tearjerker in any way. I first heard about this book on an NPR talk show and was moved by the way Ms. MacPherson talked about her meeting with Anna and how she had been welcomed into the most private moments of the family. A wonderful book, I recommend it wholeheartedly. (By the way, you can listen to the archive edition of The Diane Rehm Show by going to Http://www.wamu.org/dr/shows/drarc_990222.html#thursday)

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An honest, gentle and poignant story., August 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: She Came to Live Out Loud: An Inspiring Family Journey Through Illness, Loss, and Grief (Hardcover)

Families across America are dealing with the fall-out from cancer and how the loss of one family member affects all. This book is about one mother's journey (and thus, her family's) through terminal cancer. It's thought-provoking, heart-breaking and yet inspiring. Once you've read it, you will have a better understanding of what your friends and family members are going through as they deal with their cancer. I read it after my father was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. As a result, I was better able to "live out loud" with him and my mother in the last months we had together.