About When All That’s Left of Me is Love
• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Tate Publishing (August 2, 2011)
In her poignant memoir, Linda Campanella offers readers an intimate look inside her family and her heart as she relives and reconstructs her last year with her terminally ill mother and, in the process, comes to terms with the pain and permanence of her loss. At the heart of this story is the important realization that a terminal diagnosis does not terminate life.
When Campanella received the devastating news of her 73-year-old mother’s terminal illness, her thoughts immediately raced ahead to the time when her mother would no longer be alive, but she managed to pull herself back from this premature grief. Realizing her mother’s life was not over yet, she resolved that her remaining days should be spent living, not dying. Campanella committed herself to ensuring her mother would live fully, and joyfully, for the rest of her life, no matter how much, or how little, time was left.
Readers travel on the emotional journey from day of diagnosis to the moment of death one year and one day later and then through Campanella’s first three months as a motherless daughter. The author includes many verbatim email messages exchanged among members of her family, allowing readers to hear their voices and imagine what it would have been like to be one of them at a particular moment. The interweaving of these “real-time” accounts of events and emotions makes this story especially honest, revealing, and powerful.
Ultimately When All That’s Left of Me Is Love is an uplifting, hopeful, affirming book. Though this story of a daughter’s undying love for her dying mother is intensely personal, its themes are universal. It is about anguish, death, tears, and grief, but more than that the story is about love, faith, family, courage and gratitude. It is filled with insights and inspirations that will move and motivate not only those who face or fear death but also those who love and embrace life.
About Linda Campanella
Linda Campanella is a management consultant and the mother of three sons. Before she launched a private consulting practice serving nonprofit organizations, her professional career included stints as an international trade negotiator in the executive branch of the U.S. government, a corporate executive in the aerospace industry, and a senior administrator at a private college. She is a graduate of the first co-ed class of Amherst College and earned a master’s from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. Raised in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, she currently resides in West Hartford, Connecticut, with her husband and high school sweetheart, Joe, and the mini-goldendoodle who joined the family nine months after the author became a motherless daughter. This book, her first, was written as a tribute to her mother and a gift to her father.
Linda’s Tour Stops
Tuesday, April 3rd: Hospitable Pursuits
Wednesday, April 4th: The Book Garden
Thursday, April 5th: The Feminist Texican [Reads]
Monday, April 9th: EmSun
Tuesday, April 10th: The Book Bag
Wednesday, April 11th: Good Girl Gone Redneck
Thursday, April 12th: BookNAround
Saturday, April 21st: Kritters Ramblings
Wednesday, April 25th: Silver & Grace
Thursday, April 26th: Life in the Thumb