Dream New Dreams

This book was written by Jai Pausch, whose late-husband was the writer of the bestseller The Last Lecture. I read his book The Last Lecture months before he passed away. From that book, I saw that he was a really brilliant person who was lucky enough to have most of his dreams come true.

In this book written by his wife (who is now married to another man), she shares with us the challenges that she went through in taking care of her husband when he was sick (cancer), balancing his needs with their 3 small children's needs, and life after her husband died.

I couldn't help thinking about what would have happened if an ordinary person like me were in his or her place. The first staggering difference between me and them is financially. They were able to hire help to look after the kids, meet many many expert doctors, pay for very expensive treatments...and in between that, travel to spend quality time with the kids. In an ordinary person's situation, especially here in Malaysia, we would rely on what the doctors tell us; at the most, we'd get 3 opinions from government's specialist and non-government specialist. Then, we'd just go through the chemotherapy and take the other medications given. Cancer patients here do not have the opportunity that they had in trying new discoveries and discussing new researches and new probabilities in their own country.

The second staggering difference between me and them is culture. There's a pro and con to this. In our culture, the parents or siblings would usually come and live-in with the terminally ill person and take care of the person till his last breath. So far, I've never heard a spouse having to take care of the terminally ill person alone at home, based on what I've seen from my & Mr.H's relatives. Jai, on the other hand, relied mostly on her paid helpers. Con: It's hard to get professional helpers here in Malaysia.

Besides that, in our culture, a woman with 3 kids would find it difficult, if not impossible, to get a new husband. Her late husband was supportive in her marrying again, he even prepared a list of his friends and acquaintances whom he felt was eligible and qualified to take his place once he's gone. Look at how many single mothers (ibu tunggal) our country have? More than 10 years ago, there was about 150,000 single mothers (and I bet more than half of them were not because of husband's death but simply being left by their husband, for whatever the husband's dumb reason was). If the number increases by 10% every year, as reported in national papers in year 2000, we'd have close to a half a million single mothers. Men here, even those who are old enough to be our grandfathers, go for 'anak dara'. That's their first priority.

I'd better end this post before I get even more emotional about the plights of woman and single mothers here in Malaysia. 

This book is priced RM49.90 at MPH and 225 pages. I consider the content of this book as quite 'heavy' as it deals with a true person's challenges/dark times and having to continue to live without the person you love so much and brought magic into your life.