I just got ‘Regrets of the Dying’ as a gift for Christmas and love it so far.
Scull used a series of interviews of either people aged 70 and up or people who have gone through life threatening circumstances to curate her book. The interviews all had one thing in common: what they would do differently with their life had they had a chance to before the life threatening circumstance or before reaching old age.
Scull herself has gone through a rough life having ran away from home, and getting married while still a teen. This allowed her to have good attention to detail as is shown in the book, or at least as much as I’ve read so far.
The first heartfelt story is about a man named Alan who was diagnosed with stage two brain cancer. Alan worked his butt off since he was in high school to have a stable yet high income to support his family and enjoyed cycling and running which kept him insanely fit. He never took a break in the thirty years of his career as a programmer for a print company. He finally took a break to travel and just relax but felt off. He was more drowsy than usual and would go to sleep earlier. It was then he went to the doctor and found out he had stage 2 brain cancer. Essentially the cancer took everything away from him including his job and years of physical training. He realized that all he ever wanted was to be around people and travel as his job was quite lonely and time consuming, even though he was being payed well.
by Choqqa