Book Review…Timeless lessons on Dying, Death and Fate

Feb 09, 2014 News

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Book: Soaring into Magnificence – Cancer: From Illness to Holiness by Hilary Kincaid
Critic: Dr Glenville Ashby

“Soaring into Magnificence” delivers an existential hardware that reverberates on several levels. It details the travails and woes of a cancer victim while showcasing the resilience and indefatigability of the human spirit. This is a work presented through the prism of both the fallen victim and her husband, Hilary Kincaid.

Kincaid pens an emotive work, a wrenching experience with all the tone, atmosphere and colour to tug at the sensibilities of readers. This is no easy undertaking, but the author reaches deep and with palpable passionate recounts the initial alarm, up to the final stage of a battle that cut down a woman in the prime of her life, and left a gaping wound from which he is yet to recover.
Kincaid’s presentation is incisive and unfiltered. His candour is stark. This is work that arguably borders on hagiography. “Ruth cared and loved so much that she went to great lengths to protect me from the full magnitude and implications of her illness. She minimised, she disguised and she forewarned. As this woman of substance went out of the way to shelter me; she did the same for friends and siblings and close friends. I think that this appealed to her sense of nobility, and her Christian ethos of self sacrifice,” reads Kincaid’s encomium.
Some may find it disconcerting but Kincaid would have it no other way. He lived through the experience, the pain and her eviscerating death. Only he can understand, and rightly, only he knows her valiant effort, her steely will and her spiritual depth. But to view this as a recollection of cancer’s scourge is a huge misstep and the loss of an opportunity to engage in philosophical and theological polemics. This is the far-reaching implication of “Soaring into Magnificence.”
What is faith? Does God really answer prayers? If so, why aren’t the supplications of the suffering answered? Is surrendering to the will of God tantamount to fatalism? Why do the faithful suffer despite a supposed close connection to the divine? Are we victims of misguided faith?  Such are the questions that Kincaid’s work provokes. Such are the questions that are likely to draw a clear line in the proverbial sand. “Soaring’ provides fodder for atheists and agnostics, as it does for the faithful.
Of Ruth’s battle, Kincaid is vividly and jarringly descriptive: “She had to lean on me in a slow walk to move from bed to bathroom; it was negligible distance of twelve to fifteen feet, but a daily marathon and testing of the fibres of her tenacity. Many times in those shuffling walks, I felt her heaviness and wondered how far away was she from collapse and the hard ground.”
He pens, further, “Ruth and I decided that we would live – or at least try to live as normal, but with heavier emphasis on faith building exercises, reliance on God, and submission to His will, even when it was the most difficult thing to do…For Ruth it was life as usual.”
Kincaid sees miracles in occurrences we take for granted. Weather conditions that eased their gruelling visit for chemotherapy, or a non-problematic, effortless egress through Guyana’s airport at a time when Ruth’s strength and mobility were severely compromised. Even the seemingly inconsequential is now loaded with meaning. Of the airport experience he recounts, “Ruth hobbled her jaded way slowly towards immigration and miracle of miracles we were through in less than five minutes. This has never happened before in over thirty years of passing through that cumbersome checkpoint.”
He later writes: “…though I never stopped praying all the way to the end, I knew Ruth had her fair share of miracles, more than her share. Therefore to pray for more would be selfish, greedy; perhaps even crudely demanding.”
Ruth’s suffering transformed her husband. It made him a believer, a thinker. There is virtue and redemption in suffering. And awaiting the believer after death is a divine mead. It’s a philosophy embraced by many faith. Kincaid was clinging to every iota of this teaching. Ruth had long believed that much. Sure, we are all aware of life’s curve balls, its vicissitudes and unpredictability.  Ruth acceptance of God will is stirring. “Thy will be done,” – an excerpt from the Lord’s prayer is a reminder that we shouldn’t attempt to swim against the current; that we cannot abrogate Nature Law but rather act in concert with it.
Ruth was special because she danced delicately, almost perfectly between fate and self -preservation.
Ruth’s indissoluble belief in Christian eschatology and its soteriological teachings brought a sense of tranquility, a “shekinah” in the face of momentous dread.
Her gratitude for life with its paradoxes – of bounty and scarcity; of health and illness; of hope and despair; and of joy and sadness, is also worth examining.
Despite his loss, Kincaid work oozes with appreciation for the professionals, family members, and friends who cared. For sure, Ruth taught him much grace, humility and strength.
Ruth’s inspiring story has taught us timeless lessons, notwithstanding our religious and philosophical differences. Her paragon of calm and self-assurance is testament to an indomitable portion of us that is mystical, almost ineffable. Some call it the soul. To others, it’s the spirit. But semantics will not alter its uniquely luminous quality. Would that we all tap into that reservoir of towering love and strength? Ruth did, undoubtedly.

Soaring into Magnificence – Cancer: From Illness to Holiness by Hilary Kincaid
Publisher: Publish America, Baltimore, USA
ISBN 978 -1-4560-8393-9
Available: amazon.com
Rating: Highly recommended
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

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