Learning to Fall: Blessings of an Imperfect Life

By Philip Simmons. Bantam Books div. Random House, 2002.

Reviewed by: Meg Wickes, Hospice Volunteer.

This book, with its fascinating digressions, is about the art of dying. After nine years as a young professor, teaching English and creative writing at lake Forest College in Illinois, Philip Simmons was diagnosed with ALS, known as .Lou Gehrig's Disease. This led to a move with his wife and two children to the family's summer cottage in New Hampshire's rugged White Mountains where the author had lived as a child.

Twelve short essays make up this small volume, each containing a nugget of insightful wisdom, deepened and sharpened by the author's ongoing struggle with an increased physical incapacity. These convey an astounding "lightness of being," infused with humor and style. He calls on the Buddha, on Lao-tzu and such moderns as the Dalai Lama as well as stories from the Bible to illuminate his down-to-earth communion with the simple aspects of life in the mountain's shadow.

In the last essays he concludes, "When we accept our impermanence, letting go of our attachments to things as they are, we open ourselves to grace. When we can stand calmly in the face of our passing away, when we have the courage to look even into the face of a child and say, 'This flower, too, will fade and be no more,' when we can sense the nearness of death and feel its rightness equally with birth, then we will have crossed over to that farthest shore where death can hold no fear for us, where we will know the measure of the eternal that is ours in this life."

The author shares his growing connection with a God that draws more on Emerson than organized religion. This is not a "Christian" book in the doctrinaire sense, but for seekers there is a blessing of shared faith, strong and sure. Here is a healing journey for all of us facing death-ultimately or too close at hand.