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Because I'd Hate to Just Disappear: My Cancer, My Self, Our Story
“Illness, in the larger sense of mortality,” Don Hardy writes, “is an inescapable shared trait among all living creatures, and we humans know about it, whether or not we want to talk about it.”
Because I’d Hate to Just Disappear is a portrait of a husband and wife, Don and Heather Hardy, thrown into the physical and emotional machinery of Don being diagnosed with leukemia and going through chemotherapy and treatment over a period of close to two years.
In this thoughtful and exquisite account, Don and Heather narrate Don’s struggle in real-time. Disarmingly honest, they recount each intimate stage of a couple living through cancer together, the mental and physical struggles, the humor and visceral emotion to reveal how two very different personalities shape—and are shaped by—the experience of cancer and its treatment. Through these moments emerge a constant flow of human kindness and discovery that lifts them each day.
Because I’d Hate to Just Disappear is a portrait of a husband and wife, Don and Heather Hardy, thrown into the physical and emotional machinery of Don being diagnosed with leukemia and going through chemotherapy and treatment over a period of close to two years.
In this thoughtful and exquisite account, Don and Heather narrate Don’s struggle in real-time. Disarmingly honest, they recount each intimate stage of a couple living through cancer together, the mental and physical struggles, the humor and visceral emotion to reveal how two very different personalities shape—and are shaped by—the experience of cancer and its treatment. Through these moments emerge a constant flow of human kindness and discovery that lifts them each day.
279 pages, Paperback
Published April 16, 2018
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May 14, 2018
Full disclosure: I know the author. He taught me linguistics at NIU an age or two ago.
Even fuller disclosure: I'm one of the students who he reports compared him to Christopher Walken. I think I may have even started the Donald Hardy Looks Like Christopher Walken Fan Club before I graduated. And while the two of them sound nothing alike, if Walken isn't at least approached to do this audiobook, I'm going to be mad.
But never mind all that. Because I'd Hate to Just Disappear is a series of entries he wrote while battling cancer years ago, with each chapter containing an afterword (maybe "correction" would be closer to the mark) by his wife Heather, who's also a linguist. Hardy is up front and cheerfully brash in his discussion of the illness, what it did to him and what it's still doing to him. His voice is honest and resonating. You want to hear more of it.
Take the title. Hardy drilled into me the concept of the presupposition well enough for me to recognize it in the title of this book. It's the same lesson he used when pulling out Led Zeppelin lyrics: "And if I say to you tomorrow, come take my hand..." Or his comparisons of diagnoses and current moods with the style of Henry James. Or the penis jokes. Or the jokes about the penis jokes. In one chapter, Hardy delivers this line: "Obviously I'm not to be trusted anymore, so the doctor performs a thorough examination of my penis and scrotal area without my direction. She finds nothing of interest." I guffawed.
Later in the book, Heather Hardy points out that most, if not all of us have either experienced this horror firsthand, or gone through it in our family or know someone who has. All too true. And books like this serve a vital function. The illness can't be so taboo it can't be part of our mainstream discussions. Hardy says a lot of the fear over chemo went away once it started, and his courage becomes accessible to us through his frank, pragmatic yet at times lightheaded narration.
Cancer is a tragedy. I dread hearing further bad news about his diagnosis, and I can only imagine the courage and strength it takes to get through a medical/prosaic experience like this, but I'm grateful that he's added his voice to the chorus.
Even fuller disclosure: I'm one of the students who he reports compared him to Christopher Walken. I think I may have even started the Donald Hardy Looks Like Christopher Walken Fan Club before I graduated. And while the two of them sound nothing alike, if Walken isn't at least approached to do this audiobook, I'm going to be mad.
But never mind all that. Because I'd Hate to Just Disappear is a series of entries he wrote while battling cancer years ago, with each chapter containing an afterword (maybe "correction" would be closer to the mark) by his wife Heather, who's also a linguist. Hardy is up front and cheerfully brash in his discussion of the illness, what it did to him and what it's still doing to him. His voice is honest and resonating. You want to hear more of it.
Take the title. Hardy drilled into me the concept of the presupposition well enough for me to recognize it in the title of this book. It's the same lesson he used when pulling out Led Zeppelin lyrics: "And if I say to you tomorrow, come take my hand..." Or his comparisons of diagnoses and current moods with the style of Henry James. Or the penis jokes. Or the jokes about the penis jokes. In one chapter, Hardy delivers this line: "Obviously I'm not to be trusted anymore, so the doctor performs a thorough examination of my penis and scrotal area without my direction. She finds nothing of interest." I guffawed.
Later in the book, Heather Hardy points out that most, if not all of us have either experienced this horror firsthand, or gone through it in our family or know someone who has. All too true. And books like this serve a vital function. The illness can't be so taboo it can't be part of our mainstream discussions. Hardy says a lot of the fear over chemo went away once it started, and his courage becomes accessible to us through his frank, pragmatic yet at times lightheaded narration.
Cancer is a tragedy. I dread hearing further bad news about his diagnosis, and I can only imagine the courage and strength it takes to get through a medical/prosaic experience like this, but I'm grateful that he's added his voice to the chorus.
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