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The most meaningful book I've read this year has been When Breath Becomes Air, written by Paul Kalanithi - a neurosurgeon who wrote about his experience battling Stage IV lung cancer.

While supporting a family member diagnosed with malignant cancer is different than my mother's fight against Alzheimer's, a passage written by his wife in the epilogue really jumped out to me. It reminded me of how I have been grateful, both for my community over the past three years and for how my marriage with Charlie has been fortified in unexpected ways.

And yet we did feel lucky, grateful - for family, for community, for opportunity, for our daughter, for having risen to meet each other at a time when absolute trust and acceptance were required. Although these last few years have been wrenching and difficult - sometimes almost impossible - they have also been the most beautiful and profound of my life, requiring the daily act of holding life and death, joy and pain in balance and exploring new depths of gratitude and love. (--Lucy Kalanithi, p.219)