Boken är nu äntligen utläst, och det tog mig evigheter.
Men jag har aldrig läst en bättre eller ärligare bok.
Och det är helt sjukt att Jim's nattliga mejl, som från början skickades till 120 hem, nåddes av nästan 4000 läsare när han skrev sitt sista brev.

Här är då några av mina favoritcitat:

March 3, 2004
My beloved Cecily died this morning, March 3, at 8:05 a.m. She was a brilliant actress and acting coach, a highly respected and beloved casting director, and she was, with our two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, the light of my life. She died peacefully, quietly. I was by her side, where I have been for nineteen years.

April 9, 2004
About two months after Cec and I began dating, I went back to Texas for a family reunion. It was a campout at some lake, and two or three times a day I would walk a mile each way to a phone booth to call Cec. We were still a new couple and we couldn't go long without talking to each other. (Eighteen years later, I was on location in Mexico and we still had to talk to each other about five times a day. So much for losing interest.)

April 20, 2004
I always said that when my time came, I wanted my ashes scattered in Monument Valley. Now, though, I think I'd prefer to have them in Fern Canyon, near the girl who gave me Monument Valley.

May 4, 2004
Never, ever tell anyone you're feeling better. Sometime within the next day, you will certainly find out just how better you ain't.

May 17, 2004
I sure loved my old man. And I sure loved my sweet wife. And nothing can adequately describe how I miss them. Hold tight to those you love. Hold tight.

June 8, 2004
One may be the loneliest number, but there's an equation that's lonelier still: 2 - 1 = 1.

June 20, 2004 Father's Day.
This morning I talked to Maddie on the telephone. She said, "Happy Father's Day." I melted into a formless lump of protoplasm. This was my first Father's Day as a single father and my first Father's Day without a father.

August 12, 2004
I often have treated myself to something special on my birthday, but the one thing I truly wanted today was to share it with a girl who had chocolate eyes and a bewildering sense that I was it for her. I didn't get that. But I did get "Happy Bithday" sung to be by her chocolate-eyed daughter. And that, my friends, was a birthday.

August 26, 2004
We talked together and with all the gang for an hour or two. Finally the girl said she needed to go, so I walked her to her car and asked if I could call her sometime. She said yes. Three years, eight months, and eleven days later, we were married. Eighteen years, six months, and six days after that first night, it came to pass that we were parted, for the first time and forever. That first night was nineteen years ago tonight, August 26, 1985.

October 27, 2004
Today is my father's birthday. He would have been eighty today, had he lived, and I would have had him for five months and eleven days more. Except for the year I was in Vietnam, this is the first birthday I have not talked with him, not told him how much I loved him, how much of my strenght and whatever decence I have I took from him. Nothing in my life has made me prouder than being James Norman Beaver Jr.

October 27, 2004
I wrote on that first night, "Cecily's gonna beat this. You watch." I was wrong.