Thoughts on After the End

Author: Clare Mackintosh

Genres: fiction

What is your definition of life?

The book separates into two parts. What happened? And what happens after the end. It is a book everyone should read as other readers are commended on the back of the book. But to be more specific, it is a discussion on what is life which I really recommended people in their adulthood have a read on it.

Brief story: A two-year-old current resident in the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) of the same hospital where he was born just a couple of years earlier Dylan, because of his brain tumour triggered by pneumonitis. His mother, Pip, takes a long break from her job to take care of her son in the hospital. His father, Max, is a worker frequently travelling between the US and the UK.

When your beloved one is suffering, fighting for the tremor weeks and months from every kind of treatment, a new treatment introduced to you, not that it will make them walk out of the hospital again, but to prolong their lives. Would you take it?

I have spent every day with my son since he was admitted to hospital last autumn. I’ve been there when he’s had seizures so bad they’ve had to sedate him, when they’ve given him morphine for the pain. I’ve learned how to suction his saliva, how to massage his back to lessen the secretions, how to manipulate his arms and legs so they don’t waste away.  

Life biggest question. The most compelling and vital is the decision. Max and Pip have different wishes, but they both agree the point – they do the best for their son, Dylan. What is the best? As in one of the author’s interviews, I can somehow give the view of the two main characters on life. Max hope for the quantity of life; Pip hopes for the quality of life. No right or wrong here, I have to state. Max tried his best to give life back to his son; meanwhile, he was concerned about the aftermath of the new treatment. Asked the doctor how it would the life be for his son. Pip, on the other hand, refuses to let her son live the way he’ll live if he survives.

Public's child. The other part I notice is the fundraising that Max put up on Twitter. The influence of social networks has done its job – spreading to more residents and media. Reports and stories of them shape in a way the public wants. On the flip side, titles and shorten-stories didn’t cover the whole thing. Invective to Pip, calling her the mother of the son enduring serious condition the murderer. The public is keenly aware as if he is their child. I find it so heart-wrenching but realistic.

I couldn’t cover all my thoughts here. But this book just indicates how life indeed can be. And trust me, the best part of the book is after the life ends of Dylan, which is the last one-third of the book. How we wish to stand at the fork of the road and hope that we could see the end of each route of the paths because we could know which one to take.

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Question: How would you treat a life? Surviving/Existing with a bearable condition which could quickly be used to it. Or struggles and challenges through life without knowing when to end and if it could succeed.