No Regrets: Last Chance for a Father and Son

by Barry Neil Kaufman

No Regrets is the personal story of an "adventure" – the adventure of a shared life between son and father. The story spans decades but culminated in two terrific years of reconciliation and love. This book is a tribute to a man called Abe, a good man, a person of simple tastes, modest aspirations and respectable accomplishments, who dared, at the age of eighty-five, to challenge the very fabric of his life and open his heart in a manner profoundly new. Barry Kaufman has spent his entire life in self examination and exploring human emotions and thoughts, trying to understand relationships and interactions. His life work has been to assist individuals and families cope with severe adversities and traumas. When his own son was diagnosed as irreversibly autistic, functionally retarded and neurologically impaired, he and his wife realized that they had worked diligently, as if toward an unknown goal, to transform themselves before his arrival. All the work with others had been preparing them to meet this challenge successfully.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published March 31, 2003

Reviews

[Douglas Lord · Rating 5 out of 5]

This chronicle of the diagnosis, treatment, and death of Kaufman’s father, Abe, from cancer relates a moving and deeply spiritual experience for both father and son. Abe, perhaps for the first time, chooses happiness: he grows, learns, and lives fully even while dying. Meanwhile, Kaufman, author of Happiness Is a Choice and founder of the Option Institute, a learning center, ponders the meaning of all this and comes to a deep and human understanding of himself, his father, and their growing relationship. Calming and packed with wisdom, this inspirational and emotional read is not a journey of sadness but of love: as Kaufman observes, “Cancer did not seem like an enemy but instead, a friend that offered us an opportunity to find more of each other and, in the process, more of ourselves.” Those who liked Barbara Sher’s lively How To Live the Life You Love might enjoy this; an inherently different approach is Daniel Rutley’s up-tempo Escaping Emotional Entrapment: Freedom from Negative Thinking and Unhealthy Emotions . Recommended.
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[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book. Reading it is like having a mentor teach me how to respond to illness and death in the very best way possible.

I have very little experience with death. My grandparents, except for one, have all passed away, as has a dear aunt, but I was not there as they prepared to leave this life. I know a little something about funerals, but nothing really about how to react to someone who is sick and dying. This book shows me how be loving and supportive and real to someone who is going to die soon. I just realized that makes this book sound depressing--but it's not. It shows how to help someone NOT feel depressed, but feel loved in their last time on earth. And that's how I would want to be treated, but I didn't know it until I read this book.

[Marilyn Suttle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read on how to choose your thoughts and make happiness a way of life.

[Armatstorage · Rating 1 out of 5]

I skimmed this book. I didn't really get into it. It didn't have a way that I appreciated.
Has 336 pages.