Description
Book SynopsisI wouldn't trade my life for anyone else's. If I could choose not to have cancer, and continue my life as it was, I wouldn't do it. Matt Gauger.
You're twenty-two, in love, and just starting a career. The last thing you're worried about is the purpose of life (whatever that means) and when you're going to die. If you think about such things, you certainly don't talk about them.
With his sociable personality and love of music and basketball, Matt had plenty of friends but didn't really stand out from the crowd. Then, a month before his wedding, he was diagnosed with cancer. Six months later he was dead. But
Six Months to Live isn't really about dying. It's the story of how Matt and his family and friends struggled to accept his suffering, and how it changed each of them. It's about facing (rather than avoiding) life's most important questions, and instead of going through the motions living life to the full.
Trade ReviewA little book, but a grand witness . . . Matt’s story reminds us that though dying is a gritty and painful process, death does not have the final word. --Gerald L. Sittser, author
An extraordinary account – simple and profound. Matt’s struggle is one we will all eventually have to go through. --Francis S. MacNutt, author, Healing
It is a tragedy when a life is cut this short, though in being compressed it becomes like a diamond. Through the clarity of this prism we can see a life lived for God, and lived well. --Frederica Mathewes-Green, columnist
Compelling…Six Months to Live captures the essence of dying with dignity and grace. I have never read a book about dying that left me with such a feeling of peace. --Judy Lentz, former CEO, Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association
Six Months to Live tears at the soul and leaves the reader determined to take a new direction…If you don’t read another book this year, read this one. --The Oklahoman
Deep, fascinating, theologically rich… --Christianity Today
Secularists often ask why the good die young, and sometimes very young. Daniel Hallock’s Six Months to Live: Learning from a Young Man with Cancer is a good book to give those facing a death sentence. --Marvin Olasky, WORLD Magazine
Powerful…It is rare to be invited on such and intimate journey. --N. Gordon Cosby, fouinder, Church of the Savior
Matt Gauger, the subject of this slim, poignant book, suddenly found himself dying of cancer at age 22. Hallock gives readers an intimate account of events, beginning with the robust, athletic young man's descent into unmanageable pain, followed by a serious diagnosis and months of reckoning with end-of-life issues. The text features long quotations from interviews with and diaries of those closest to Gauger among them his wife, parents, brother and doctor and in doing so paints the emotional, spiritual and physical landscape within which this drama unfolded. Hallock admirably avoids hagiography, as do Gauger's loved ones, and instead reveals the ennobling effect dying had on Gauger. --Publishers Weekly
Table of ContentsContents Preface 1. The Blow 2. Gobbler 3. Cynthia 4. Life with Chemo 5. Back to the Front 6. Learning to Let Go 7. Before Morning 8. Ties that Bind 9. New Seeds Coda
