Learnings From His Last 39 Months
JOHN’S STORY
He faced cancer head on and left us a great gift.
John Ryan, at 64, was diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer. We travel with him on what he called an “unwanted journey”. We see through his eyes. We come to understand his fears and hopes. We see him broken and then made whole. We see him face terminal illness with no illusions and become his true self, a new man.
We see his great and enduring love for his family. We see day in and day out how he faced the end of his life. We see how he acted with clarity and resolve. We see how he helped his wife, his children, his friends, face their own unspeakable sadness. We see and learn from his remarkable courage, his faith, his generosity. We see his spirituality tested and then strengthened as he discovered and lived in “the eternal now.”
Simply put, John taught us in “living his dying” what really counts in a life.
John’s learnings during his 39-month journey with cancer were documented in journals and in this book. He left us a path to follow. His book is both a memoir and a practical guide. It is a helpful resource for cancer patients, family members, medical professionals. He left us many excellent concrete everyday practices we can follow. These practices help us come to terms with illness. Help us cope. Help us move forward in the face of great adversity. John with his hard-earned wisdom helps all of us find deeper levels of meaning in our lives.
John was a husband, a father, a grandfather, a devoted son, a business executive, a small business owner, and more.
We can think of him as our teacher, a pilgrim, a fellow traveler.
His story is all our stories. A story of endurance, of transformation, and learning to see that grace is everywhere as his life was turned upside down by a grave illness.
We can carry inside his messages and thus will not lose our way. “Fragile. Unconditional acceptance. Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find.”
This book describes the moving spiritual journey of a remarkable man, John Ryan, told in his own words. While there are many accounts of terminal illness, few have achieved the candor and depth of spiritual insight on display in this volume. With a razor-sharp honesty, John Ryan describes his ups and downs, his fluctuations between despair and hope, and his search for a spirituality that transcends death. While the book is deeply grounded in the best of the Catholic Christian tradition, it explores the meaning of the sacredness of life and the far reaches of grace through an eclectic range of novels, spiritual teachings, and rituals of care.
— from the Foreword by Larry R. Churchill, PhD, Stahlman Professor of Medical Ethics Emeritus, Vanderbilt University