Chasing Daylight:How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life
by Gene O'Kelly

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Book Reviews of Chasing Daylight:How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life

Book Review: Conventional wisdom, but still touching and uplifting
Summary: 4 Stars

Summary of Chasing Daylight:How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life

?Must the end of life be the worst part?

Can it be made the best??

At 53, Eugene O'Kelly was in the full swing of life. Chairman and CEO of KPMG, one of the largest U.S. accounting firms, he enjoyed a successful career and drew happiness from his wife, children, family, and close friends. He was thinking ahead: the next business trip, the firm's continued success, weekend plans with his wife, his daughter's first day of eighth grade.

Then in May 2005, Gene was diagnosed with late-stage brain cancer and given three to six months to live. Just like that.

Now a growing darkness was absorbing the bright future he had seen for himself. He would have to change his plans, quickly, and capture what he could of his last diminishing days.

Chasing Daylight is the account of his final journey. Starting from the time of his diagnosis and concluded upon his death less than four months later, this book is his unforgettable story.

With startling intimacy, it chronicles the dissolution of Eugene O'Kelly's life and his gradual awakening to a more profound understanding. Interweaving unsettling details of his battle with cancer with his moment-to-moment reflections on life and death, love and success, spirituality and the search for meaning, it provides a testament to the power of the human spirit and a compelling message about how to live a more vivid, balanced, and meaningful life.

Inspiring, passionate, deeply insightful, Chasing Daylight is a remarkable man's poignant farewell to a beloved world.

There are no TV-movie-style miracle treatments or extensions of his life expectancy; he's told he has maybe 3 months, and he doesn't spend any energy hoping for a cure. True to his CEO style, he creates goals for himself, lists of friends to visit for the last time; he meditates; he tries to create as many "Perfect Moments" that he can, during dinner or phone conversations with friends, and realized how few rare those moments of connection and joy were in his "previous life."[p116] "Chasing Daylight" is as much a self-criticism of his job-before- family ways as it is a meditation on time and a transition to a tranquil, spiritual state utterly foreign to him as a CEO. O'Kelly's absolutely more fulfilled by the soul work that he finishes in 100 days, compared to his 30 years of corporate promotions and accolades, and he utterly convinces readers to ponder their own situation, whether "in the gloaming" of life as he was or not.--Erica Jorgensen

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