Before I Say Goodbye: Recollections and Observations from One Woman's Final Year

Ruth Picardie, a columnist for the London Observer, was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was thirty three years old and new mother to twins. She died within the year. Before I say Goodbye is her achingly brilliant memoir, compiled posthumously by her husband and sister from email correspondence, the five columns she wrote about her illness, and recollections from family and friends. There are even profoundly moving letters written to her in response to her published articles, from strangers touched by her revelations. At 131 pages, the book is a mercifully short read. However Picardie's frank and biting humor as she looks down the barrel will reverberate long after you put it down (and you can only do that once finished — there is no pause for breath while this book is in your hands.)

Reading Picardie's email is intimate, almost voyeuristic, and reveals the articulate prose of a journalist who has chosen you to be her confidant, a woman you would be proud to call your friend. You envy the ones who received these quirky, darkly funny, and searingly honest missives, even as you wail for the loss that those around her must have felt when she died. The importance of Picardie's relationships with her girlfriends is one of the strongest themes of the book, and as all consuming as her illness is she still needs the routines and pleasures of friendship. Railing against holistic and naturopathic healing, Picardie champions "retail therapy", which involves copious shopping for cosmetics and clothes and long lunches with her girlfriends.

Reading the book, I was astonished to discover how little I really know about breast cancer, and wondered how much anyone can truly understand until they experience it firsthand. Picardie often refers to it as the "great unmentionable." She rants with furious and hilarious sarcasm about the doctors she must deal with and the haste of the onset of the disease; rapidly it spreads to her lungs, a fact that she is insists on telling her doctors relentlessly, but which the doctors only agree with months later. By the time the doctors acknowledge her lungs she can feel it behind her eyes. Throughout each stage, as the horror becomes more and more real, Picardie's dazzling wit, her day to day concerns will have you giggling somewhat guiltily.

Before I say Goodbye is one of the most agonizing books I have ever read, and one of the most important in reinforcing my world outlook — one in which friendships mean everything and life is so, so precious.

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