"The last lecture"

This is the novel which I just completed reading; and let me tell you this, it touched me more than any other book of recent past.

Each year at a series known as The Last Lecture, a Carnegie Mellon University faculty member is asked to deliver what would hypothetically be a final speech to their students before dying. It is a wonderful tradition in which both speaker and listeners take a moment to reflect upon what matters most in this life. In September 2007, the speaker, 47-year-old computer science professor and father of three, Randy Pausch, didn't have to imagine that he was confronting his imminent demise because, in fact, he was. Pausch had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and, at the time of his Last Lecture, had only been given three to six months to live. Pausch's speech, entitled "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," was every bit as upbeat and inspirational as the man himself. Rather than focusing on dying, it was a speech about living, about achieving one's dreams and enabling the dreams of others, about truly living each day as though it were your last.
It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because as Randy puts it "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.
In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.
Why this touches most is, Randy knows that he is going to die; but puts a brave fight and virtually prepares his entire family for life without him. He spends the available time very precisely. While reading, you could imagine through as what might have been going through in the entire family.

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."
--Randy Pausch