Storied Companions

Facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, Karen Derris-professor, mother, and Buddhist practitioner-turned to books. Crashing into impermanence, why me" is unhelpful, but "when" is crucial. Reading stories and putting herself into the stories turns these ancient Buddhist stories into companions-into guides for the parts of life that don't have guides. Interweaves her memoir with stories from the Buddhist canon-interweaves herself into those stories-to find ways to live with the notion that she won't live, ways to cope even though, as she puts it, she is crashing into impermanence honest, powerful, insightful, illuminating. Takes familiar stories and illuminates them, finding ways to make them immediate and real to her living experience. "With my diagnosis ofstage IV brain cancer, I no longer observe the truth of impermanence from a critical, analytical distance. I am crashing into it, or it into me"--