Enjoyed Reading “A Matter of Death and Life,” by Irvin and Marilyn Yalom? Try These 4 Books!

Unconditional love is the highest power in the universe, and it’s that kind of love that characterized the marriage of Irvin and Marilyn Yalom for more than 65 years until her death from cancer in 2019.

This book, A Matter of Death and Life, is their joint account of her descent into illness and Irvin’s struggle to live without her from now on.

Irvin Yalom is one of the founding fathers of existential psychotherapy, along with Rollo May and others, and Marilyn was an esteemed author and activist who matched Irvin “book for book” for her entire career.

For the present book, they took turns writing, chapter for chapter, until she became too sick to write and Irvin took over the writing responsibilities, along with everything else that came with leaving behind his wife of more than six decades.

It’s exactly as sad as it sounds, but it’s also an incredibly important book, as it encompasses everything from the power of memories, sadness as the price of the courage to love others, and how to use prospective regret to focus all your life energies on the real business of living.

I wrote an entire 4,000–word breakdown of A Matter of Death and Life, which you can read on the Stairway to Wisdom with…