Susan Spencer-Wendel who was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease spends the last few months of her life, writing a book about her journey till death. The book is predicted to hit bestseller lists.
In June, 2011 when Susan Spencer-Wendel was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, otherwise known as motor neurone disease and was told she only had just about over a year to live, the 45 year old journalist decided to enjoy every moment of the life she had left instead of giving into the despair of death. Spencer-Wendel has written a book "Until I Say Goodbye: My Year of Living with Joy" that tells the story of her battle to live a full life as disease took its toll.
The book will be published this March and it is already touted to hit many bestselling lists. The book has already earned an advance of $2 million and the film rights have been snapped up by Universal for a further $2 million.
The story talks to heart wrenching moments like Spencer-Wendel going to Kleinfeld bridal shop in New York to pick out a wedding dress for her 14-year-old daughter, knowing that there's no chance she's every going to be able to witness the grand event herself.
Talking about this moment in her book, she writes in her website, "As my beautiful daughter walks out of the dressing room in white silk, I will see her 10 years in the future, in the back room right before her wedding, giddy and crying, overwhelmed by a moment I will never share ... When my only daughter thinks of me on her wedding day, as I hope she will, I want her to think of my smile when I say to her at Kleinfeld's, 'You are my beautiful'."
However, the book, as reported by the Guardian won't make it to the bestsellers list because of the heart wrenching moments but because of all the joy and hope and happiness the book brings. The book shows positivity to life, and even in her dying moments Spencer-Wendel fails to lose her sense of humor.
"I am writing about accepting, about living with joy and dying with joy and laughing a helluva lot in the process," she says.
In the last year of her life, Spencer-Wendel spent her 20th anniversary with her husband in Budapest, traveled around the world and fulfilled things on her bucket wish. She made scrap-book for her children and jewelry for her friends and family. The whole family came down for Thanksgiving and it was one big celebration. Spencer-Wendel reveals that she wanted Christmas to be just with her husband and children, knowing she wouldn't have much time left.
In a recent email to the Palm Beach Post, she described her last few weeks and how she keeps up her sense of happiness by reading each day a passage about joy from Kahlil Gibran's famous book of prose poetry, The Prophet.
"I believe this: that in the long trajectory of my family's lives, a deep sorrow now will open worlds of feeling for them in the future. This comforts me, brings me great peace. And the ability to delight in today and today alone," she told the newspaper's readers.