Really Sick Questi
New book written for friends and family of the terminally ill
Te Puke’s Angela Leigh has fulfilled her late husband’s wish to write a book to help friends and family of the terminally ill. Jeff’s two-year battle with cancer ended in 2012.
“Over that two years, we really noticed that people didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to do,” says Angela.
“It was Jeff’s desire to write a book about it. He’d only made a couple of notes in his journal, but he did give me the name of the book which was great because that’s the thing I would have struggled with the most.”
The book is called Really Sick Questions. “That’s his sense of humour.”
The book is broken up into three parts. The first is a short overview of Angela and Jeff’s story and Jeff’s battle against cancer. The second tackles six of the most common questions people struggle with and the third is about the struggles and process of carrying on after a loved one passes.
Part two’s questions cover things like: “What do I say?”, “Should I pop round and see them?” “How do I deal with my own emotions?” Angela candidly answers these questions from her own experiences and shares snippets of what she and Jeff personally found helpful and also what they found not so helpful.
“They are just real, basic questions, but you’d be surprised how many people struggle with those things,” says Angela.
“I’ve also put some things in there about what not to say — that could have been the biggest chapter — and I have tried to put them in a non-offensive way.”
Quotes and photographs are interspersed through the book.
“I’ve just tried to make it not so heavy.” It was not until a year and a half ago that Angela decided she would pick up the project.
“To have written it any earlier than that, I think the wrong emotions might have come out in the book.”
Initially her plan was to write a book focusing on the questions — and her answers.
“I spoke to an editor, as I didn’t know if this was going to help anyone so I just wanted someone to have a bit of a read, but he said