Worth Fighting for: Love, Loss, and Moving Forward by Lisa Niemi Swayze (English

Description: Worth Fighting for by Lisa Niemi Swayze From Patrick Swayzes widow--the moving, New York Times bestselling account of grief, loss, caregiving, and moving on, with touching stories from their final months together. When Lisa Niemi first exchanged vows with Patrick Swayze, she promised to be with her husband "till death do us part." But how many couples stop and think about what that truly means? Worth Fighting For is both a candid tribute to a marriage and a celebration of the healing power that each day holds, even in the most difficult of circumstances. Lisa shares the details of Patricks twenty-one-month battle with Stage IV pancreatic cancer, and she describes his last days, when she simply tried to keep him comfortable. She writes with heartbreaking honesty about her grief in the aftermath of his death and openly discusses the challenges that the years without him have posed. Her story is an emotionally honest and unflinching depiction of loss, but it is also a hopeful and life-affirming exploration of the power of the human spirit. "I tell you, I am a different person now," she writes, "one who has been thrown into the fire and forged." FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography Lisa Niemi Swayze is the coauthor of The Time of My Life, which she wrote with her late husband, Patrick Swayze. She wrote, directed, and produced the film One Last Dance and has held many film, television, and Broadway roles, including starring in the play Without a Word with her husband, garnering six Drama Critics Awards. Review "A worthy addition to the canon of literature that honestly assesses grief without sentimentalizing it." --"Kirkus ""Its a heartfelt account, both brave and honorable." "--Publishers Weekly ""Lisa is one of the most honest people Ive ever known. Its one of the big reasons Patrick loved her. Read it and youll see what I mean." --Whoopi Goldberg "I loved Patrick Swayze and conducted his last television interview before he died. We were joined by the woman he adored, his wife, Lisa. She was soft, tough when she had to be, funny, wise and inspiring. You will be the better for reading her book." --Barbara Walters "This heartbreaking but bracingly candid book should help comfort anyone going through the loss of a loved one." --"Booklist" Review Quote "A worthy addition to the canon of literature that honestly assesses grief without sentimentalizing it." - Kirkus "Its a heartfelt account, both brave and honorable." -Publishers Weekly "Lisa is one of the most honest people Ive ever known. Its one of the big reasons Patrick loved her. Read it and youll see what I mean." -Whoopi Goldberg "I loved Patrick Swayze and conducted his last television interview before he died. We were joined by the woman he adored, his wife, Lisa. She was soft, tough when she had to be, funny, wise and inspiring. You will be the better for reading her book." -Barbara Walters "This heartbreaking but bracingly candid book should help comfort anyone going through the loss of a loved one." - Booklist Excerpt from Book Worth Fighting For Chapter 1 FAIRY TALE THE MOMENT I reached for my notebook to start working on this book, I was flooded with an emotion that Ive tried to keep at bay for some time now. Its a wave of feeling composed of endless tears, reminding me that I havent remotely cried enough. The emotion that washes over me brings the distant past to an instant present. And the details scream out in my mind and heart: every time I pushed down my feelings, every time I smiled when my world was tumbling down around me, and every time I heard a piece of bad news and reacted positively, laughing with mock bravery when I should have been dissolved in tears. There is a high price to be paid for the privilege of caring for your loved one when hes dying, but its one I wouldnt have traded for anything. I always said that Id have plenty of time to cry later. When Patrick first got his diagnosis it looked like he might have only weeks to live. Then it was months. And then, luckily, we passed a year. And we kept going. . . . Twenty-one months is a long time to battle for your loved one against a foe like cancer. Its a long time to "hold up." And now, Ive been spit out on the other side of the fight, alone, trying to figure out how Im going to go on with my life. Hot and cold. Right now Im running hot and cold. As I write this in May of 2010, its been over six months since I lost Patrick, and right now, at this particular moment, I either despise the bad times he and I had together, or worship the good we had. No in-between. So, at this particular moment, I worry how can I talk about us, him, in an objective way. One that gives an accurate, albeit cant-help-but-be-emotional-here-and-there idea of what really happened, who he really was, who I have been, and who I am now. Cause I tell you, I am a different person now. One who has been thrown into the fire and forged. One who got stripped of all the nice things that sheltered me from the world, and from myself. Its been hard living out here in the cold. I look for a life raft anywhere, and theres none to be found. No usual anchors to ground me. No more comfortable illusions. But this person I am is real, painful in its growing spurt, the growing spurt thats happened without my husband . . . but real. And because I am real there are possibilities. Now, this isnt the way to start a book, but . . . I guess Im having an angry day, one of those days that happens sometimes since the loss of my Buddy ("Buddy" was his lifelong nickname). And, yes . . . I guess I am sad. I think I was hoping to wrap my experience with him up with a nice little bow. And remember it that way. At arms length. So, if I seem a little caustic right now, its just my attempt to have an arms-length view of the story Im telling. And unfortunately, I know that my being snarky is an attempt to not feel the loss. Because . . . when I talk about him (as Im doing here) . . . I miss him so much. So terribly. So completely that I worry how Im going to get to the next moment. Wait a minute . . . . . . there. I made it to the next moment. And thats how you get through the bad moments of grief. You do it one at a time. And now I want to talk about him. About who he was when he was here on this earth. My beautiful man. I want to tell this story before I get too far away from it and forget what the journey of the last couple years was really like. Cause we do forget. Its only real when you experience it. After that, as time goes on, it becomes merely the recounting of a story. -- YOU KNOW, its funny because theres always so much talk about divorce statistics. When you get married you cant help but be aware that there is an approximately 50 percent chance it will end in divorce. There are data about how many couples divorce in their twenties, their thirties, and so on, how many heterosexual couples, how many homosexual. There are television series starring divorced men and women, books written about divorce and by the divorced, major movies made, let alone all the divorced people you run into in everyday life, right? And then there are the children of divorced parents, the books the children write when they grow up, the movies subsequently made, the kids that are carted off to one parent or another, or even kidnapped. There is so much information out there about what happens when marriages dont work out. But no one ever talks about what happens when marriages do work out. What happens when you stay together? If this is something thats been the source of great discussions, its not really been on my radar. The short answer to what happens when marriages work out is that the lucky couple lives happily ever after. Thats the fairy tale. But were not living in a fairy tale, are we? No one talks about the "till death do us part" that comes at the end of the traditional wedding vows. What it means, what it really means. I think its funny now how many people have changed that line to "as long as we both shall live" or "for all the days of our lives." While I agree that the "death" word is a little gruesome-sounding, the two alternatives are full of loopholes. I mean, one can cherish someones memory--after one kicks him out of the house. I knew without a doubt, when things were so terrible between Patrick and me in 2003 that I moved out for a year, that I would unequivocally love him always and to the end of time, but I was still going to divorce his ass if things didnt change in our relationship. (Luckily they did.) The other wedding vow alternatives also give me a laugh: "for all eternity" (really, you can really promise that?), and one with an even more obvious escape loophole, "through whatever life may bring us." But hey, its honest. No one wants to be stuck in a bad marriage. -- "TILL DEATH do us part." Thats what Patrick and I said in our vows when we got married. I had already made sure "to honor and obey" was stricken from the record. Somehow I missed "till death do us part." I was eighteen years old, I knew death existed, but it was still a concept, something far, far in the future. So far that I didnt have to worry about it. We had the greatest priest marry us, Father Welch. Father Welch was a friend of the Swayze family. Patricks mom, Patsy, had actually done some musical theater with him back in the day and said that he had a crazy sense of humor. She told us how one day the Father came up to her, "Hey Patsy, I have a great idea for the show," he enthused, "Lets have a really elegant lady in a fancy ball gown come on the stage, then when she gets to the chair, she hikes up her dress, sits down like a farmhand, and starts plucking a chicken! Isnt that great?" I looked at Patrick and deadpanned, "He sounds great." And Father Welch was great. During my interview with him, which I found out was required for a Catholic wedding, I balked at saying yes to the questions about converting to the Catholic religion, raising children, and birth control. Hed wave a hand and write in, "yes," "yes," "yes," saying that all these questions were going to change in a few years anyway so it didnt matter. I find it hilarious that I was so honest and sincere that it was difficult for me to let him put in the "yes" answers, and yet, I didnt once mention that I didnt really believe in the institution of marriage, and furthermore, fully expected this one to end up as one of the divorce statistics. And that I was okay with that. The whole idea of marriage had come about in an abrupt way. It wasnt like Patrick and I had talked about marriage. We had talked about the future, though mostly in terms of what we wanted to do as dancers, where we wanted to dance, and with whom. I just wanted to dance. Patrick wanted to dance with me. And it made me nervous. We had been living together in our tiny, one-bedroom brownstone apartment with dark yellow-gold walls in New York City for about nine months. I had just returned from doing a dance performance and visiting my family in Houston for a few days, where I had a conversation with my very liberal, open-minded mother in which she raised a surprisingly conservative point, and said, "You know . . . without the commitment of marriage, all you and Buddy are doing is playing house." Yeah, and . . . ? Back in New York, I made the mistake of relaying this exchange to Patrick. He just kind of . . . stopped for a moment. Three days later, we were in the middle of a tickling fight on our futon couch when he paused, his arms around me. "What?" I asked curiously. His face flushed. "Why dont we do it? Why dont we get married?" I froze. And tried to buy time, clumsily attempting to negotiate a lengthy engagement, "Yeeahh, we could do that . . . we could get married . . ." I had left home only nine months before. I wasnt ready to move straight from there into another home. I had places to go, people to see, things to do! I wanted to dance! I didnt even believe in marriage to begin with, although I planned to revisit my stance on that subject in another twelve years or so when I reached thirty. "When?" he was warming up to the idea, "When do you Details ISBN1439196362 Author Lisa Niemi Swayze Short Title WORTH FIGHTING FOR Publisher Atria Books Language English ISBN-10 1439196362 ISBN-13 9781439196366 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 616.99437009 Year 2012 Publication Date 2012-10-02 Subtitle Love, Loss, and Moving Forward Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2012-10-02 NZ Release Date 2012-10-02 US Release Date 2012-10-02 UK Release Date 2012-10-02 Pages 336 Imprint Atria Books Illustrations Illustrations, black and white Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:46715166;

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