香港二樓書店 > Love and Grit in the Shadow of Death: A Leukemia Survivor’s Journey

Writers Note—Before My Deadline

　　Ive written many reports and finished many projects to meet various deadlines before, but none of them had a sense of urgency as the publication of this English memoir of mine, because the deadline Im facing now is my pending death. After learning that the sarcoma in my abdomen has shown signs of metastasis last January, I immediately launched my final project of writing my life story in my mother tongue language of Traditional Chinese and had it published in February this year with the help of a Taiwan publisher, Showwe Information Company Ltd., while unexpectedly dealing with a right temporal meningioma that led to a craniotomy last November. Many of my friends, unable to read Chinese, have expressed interest in an English version, but with my declining health, I realized that I simply didnt have time to rewrite this memoir into English on my own within my looming deadline. Yet with another turn of good luck in my life, I was able to get the assistance of the American translator Scott M. Faul to translate my Chinese memoir shortly after its completion into English and worked with him to produce this finalized version. Im also truly blessed to have a Taiwan publisher who has agreed to publish this English version of my Chinese memoir, thus fulfilling my last wish on earth.

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Translator Preface to “Love and Grit in the Shadow of Death: a Leukemia Survivors Journey”

　　I first encountered Shou-fangs abilities for telling the human story when I accepted an invitation from Taiwans PEN affiliate to translate a work of hers. A beautifully told narrative called “Till Death do US Part.” At that time, I read her autobiographic account as a love story and did my best to bring the tenderness, grace and resilience expressed in Chinese to an English reader. It wasnt until a few years later, with the translation of Love and Grit in the Shadow of Death: a Leukemia Survivors Journey which recounts that narrative in its first chapter, that I realized just how extraordinary her life has been. Her “love and grit” journey tells a story of love but its not a mere love story. She teaches us how to love living and to fight back against death in the face of tremendous odds. To me, her refusal to alter life in the face of life-altering news demonstrates true resilience and survival in the shadow of death. And her defiance at giving up on ordinary living under extraordinary circumstances is a portrayal of uncommon courage. She doesnt just quit on life to wallow in grief and rage at an unjust prognosis, but sets her sights, instead, on completing the hitherto commonplace goals she had begun in the time shes been told she has left. Perhaps this is the reason death had been unable to catch up to her in the forty plus years since. She never gave up on living her life.

　　How did Shou-fang beat the odds and live many times beyond her first of several harrowing prognoses? How did she cope with setback and hardship? What kept her going when others might just quit? These are the answers readers want and they will find them here. She details her sufferings and reveals some of the keys to facing down imminent death. She doesnt consciously change anything about her life but just keeps going on doing what it means to live. Though she remained always fully aware of the road before her, she never stopped doing the things that living people do. Afterall, living is about doing the things you want to do, and not giving up on doing this seems to be an important element in the defiance of terminal illness. Her goals didnt change because a doctor told her she had less time, they just became more poignant, such as making sure she finished her two-year interior design program in the two years given by her prognosis. And then, by the time she had completed that degree a new treatment, bone-marrow-transplant, had been developed, opening a window to life on a door that death had closed. As an author she doesnt point to this as way to cope, but rather it is just what she did and, in the doing, demonstrates an unconscious resolve to live life. To this reader, her determination to keep on shows us all how you dont need to tell yourself “Im going to beat this;” you just need to live as though you havent been beaten. For so many, imminent death means putting off new plans, but Shou-fangs understated resolve shows us just how extraordinary carrying on with the ordinary can be for making the impossible possible.

　　There are so many examples of courage, love, and grit within these pages. A testament on how to live life in the shadow of death. Her words speak to everyone; its just that with some the message resonates more loudly. Keep turning these pages to experience the unfolding of an extraordinary journey, one of resilience and love. Along the way Shou-fang reveals life under the heavy cloud of death and how to overcome darkness by way of lightness in everyday living. Confronting pending death neednt mean giving up on living life. Her journey bears witness to how death can be taken for granted but life remains always a gift to be lived. And much of the meaning in this gift derives from the enjoyment of its simple pleasures, like a friends steady hand holding yours on a snow-filled walk to a local coffee shop, the appetite-restorative power of another friends description of five-spiced braised beef, or the reassuring serenity that comes from knowing we are all connected by not only those we know, but also those we never meet, and without whose help we would not be here today. Shou-fang shows us how to live in the shadow of death with dignity and joy, and how to keep on living when the world seems to be telling us we cant. Would it be a bridge too far to say that her journey of love and grit transports us beyond the shadows reach???