Chasing Daylight
It had been some time since I'd taken a vacation, so our road trip the week of the 4th of July was a more than welcome respite... it was a necessary one.
Camping the first night on a small peninsula jutting into Rend Lake in southern Illinois, basking in the moonlight with a cold beer next to a warm fire, I knew it was going to be a fine trip. Then it was on to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis and a quick tour of Biel Street. After driving to the Natchez Trace State Forest from there and being met in battle at our campsite by kamikaze stinging flies dive-bombing our vehicle, we decided to drive on to Nashville. The flies won the battle, but we won the war that night. (What is up with the AT&T building in Nashville, by the way? It looks like the headquarters of a supervillain, what with its sinister, villainy spires and whatnot. All it needs is a windy mountain road leading up to it and some lightning in the background.)
Well, we found that windy mountain road the next morning off highway 129 in the mountains of Eastern Tennessee and North Carolina, where we would camp next to a cold, clear creek in a dry county. Cherokee for the "land of noon day sun," The Nantahala National Forest was the perfect place to rest up for the remainder of our vacation, and close to our final destination—Hendersonville, NC. We found that lightning for the background on our way home, driving through a brief thunderstorm in the Great Smokey Mountains, and when the rain cleared and mist rose so beautifully off the mountains, I thought we might have driven straight into the pages of a fantasy novel. But we were heading west, back home to our beloved Milwaukee, knowing our journey was nearing its end, just chasing daylight.
Chasing Daylight is the story of a man coming to the ultimate journey's end. Unlike The First 90 Days, which we featured recently here on this site, Chasing Daylight is all about one's last 90 days. It is the extraordinary memoir of a dying man, former KPMG CEO Eugene O'Kelly, written in the short span between when he was diagnosed with brain cancer and his death just three-and-a-half months later.
"I was blessed. I was told I had three months to live."
Chasing Daylight, Page 1
It is an engrossing story, encompassing the profundity of the situation without becoming sermonic or sentimental, regretful or righteous (not that we could have blamed him if it had). It is a book that has a lot to teach us, without telling us so. It is the somber and inspirational artistic expression of a man trained as an accountant. It is as moving as it is surprising, as brilliant as it was unexpected. It was a book that, upon its release in 2006 we didn't hear much about... until Jack read it. Jack read it in an afternoon and has been an evangelist of the book ever since. As he writes in The 100 Best:
Chasing Daylight is an eloquent confirmation that our lives and the people in them are temporary joys, but the time we spend enjoying them is never lost. And if we conquer our fears—even the fear of facing the end of our lives and leaving those we love—we can conquer anything.This book is the final gift to the world of a good and humble man—a business man focused, at his end, on the business of life. Eugene O'Kelly does leave us at the end of the book, and the final chapter is written by his widow, Corrine, who details her husband's final days and those that follow it:
The next morning, I felt sublime joy and tranquility. The pain of loss would set in later. This was a time of celebration. Gene had left in peace. I looked out at the river and saw the sunlight glittering on the water.We have 50 copies available.
It was a perfect moment.
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