Life's That Way: A Memoir

by Jim Beaver

Overview

A remarkable memoir that shows the capacity of the human heart to heal after the challenge of having to say goodbye.

Even the hardest lessons contain great gifts.

Jim Beaver and his wife Cecily Adams appeared to have it all-following years of fertility treatments, they were finally parents and they were building their dream home and successful Hollywood careers. Life was good. But then their daughter, Maddie, was diagnosed as autistic. Weeks later, Cecily, a non-smoker, was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. Sadly, after 14 years of marriage, Jim became a widower and a single dad.

Faced with overwhelming grief, Jim reached out to family and friends by writing a nightly email-a habit he established when Cecily was first diagnosed. Initially a cathartic exercise for Jim, the prose became an unforgettable journey for his readers. Life's That Way is a compilation of those profound, compelling emails.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780425232507
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/06/2010
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	692,599
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jim Beaver is an actor best known for his roles on HBO's Deadwood, the CW's Supernatural, and FX's Justified. Beaver is also a playwright, screenwriter, film historian, and Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam. He is the author of Life's That Way, a memoir in the form of emails sent to family and friends during the most challenging time of his life.

Editorial Reviews

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There are times in life when we hope, despite all evidence to the contrary. When we declare that we've hit rock bottom, only to find we've still got plenty of room to fall. Beaver, the author and a TV actor, celebrates this innocent yet profound belief -- that things will indeed get better -- in his unique memoir, Life's That Way.

Beaver's book consists of a series of e-mails he wrote over the course of a year. They began as a convenience, a way to update his friends and family nightly. His wife, Cecily, had just been diagnosed with lung cancer. At the same time, he was grappling with the recent diagnosis of his two year-old daughter, "a perfect child who's autistic." His efforts to regularly communicate express his deepest thoughts about fear, life, love, and family. We are all much richer for the experience of living it with him. (Summer 2009 Selection)

Beaver, an actor, playwright and film historian, collects a series of riveting, heartfelt e-mails chronicling the courageous cancer battle of his beloved wife, Cecily, from her diagnosis of lung cancer to her death in little over a year. Unafraid to examine their life together and his acting career as a performer on two popular TV dramas, the role of Ellsworth on Deadwood and Bobby Singer on Supernatural, he kept family and friends informed with his nightly online messages of Cecily's deteriorating status and the bittersweet childhood of their autistic daughter, Maddie. The revealing e-mails depict the somber travail of Beaver on the horrific death watch of his wife, and detail the roller-coaster ride of emotion from hoping for a speedy halt to the disease's onslaught to experiencing the dark abyss of loss. After the death of his father during this time, he writes: "This year of writing has freed me from the shackles I don't know I could have borne otherwise." While this cancer memoir often chills the reader to the core with pain and frustration, it offers countless reasons to cheer Beaver as a remarkable man, a loving husband and a responsible single parent. (Apr.)

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Publishers Weekly

All was going well for character actor Beaver (featured on HBO's Deadwood) and his wife Cecily (acting teacher, casting director, daughter of comic Don Adams) when suddenly their American Dream turned into their personal nightmare. Jim's father, Cecily's father and other family members became ill. Their toddler Maddie was diagnosed as autistic. Then, just when the Beaver family was preparing to move into their new home, Cecily was diagnosed with cancer. By spring she was dead. To help cope, Jim composed thoughtful midnight e-mails for 150 family and friends. During the course of a year, his messages gained wide circulation by being forwarded to thousands of readers. Edited for this book, they form a genuine memorial: sometimes clinical, frequently sentimental, always openhearted. Early, hopeful entries tell of chemo, transfusions, blood tests, oncology consults, CT scans and MRIs. It wasn't long before Cecily developed an inflammation surrounding her heart and pneumonia that required a ventilator. Throughout the winter of his young wife's illness, Beaver maintained that "the fight has only begun and has a long, long way to go." Readers, of course, know the inevitable end. After this devastating loss, Jim's nocturnal musings turned to his daughter, who with early intervention soon shed the diagnosis of autism, along with memories of her lost mother. The author warmly acknowledges the friends, family, helpers, babysitters, companions and bringers of good thoughts, food and love. His passionate book is about how we mourn, a topic familiar sooner or later to every reader. Beaver treats it with uncommon honesty and a bit of wisdom. A year of grief and love, forthrightly revealed.

Kirkus Reviews