Brave and honest reminiscences about having cancer and valuing life

This collection of reminiscences by women who have been part of a memoir writing group at The Wellness Community of Greater Boston is candid , proud and fervent. The women writing express their valuing of life and family, and their observations of the experience of cancer, their own and those of the medical personnel working with them. One essay speaks symbolically of the loss and changes in one's sense of being young and attractive, describing a special hat that gave the woman writing a sense of specialness. In the end, there is a valuing of what is lost and what can be kept in her saving a picture of herself in the hat that has been lost. Another writer speaks with pride of being a veteran of cancer, having long outlived the initial predictions of survival with her illness. The title of the book is captured in the final piece, in which a woman describes valuing the moment, in an excursion to a Central Park bakery with her children. Hoping to be with her children through their life events, she savors the experience of that day. It is "all that matters".

Rating: