by Samuel LeBaron
UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA PRESS
2022/$26.99/248 pp.
There’s an old Buddhist adage that says we should start each day imagining a small bird on our shoulder telling us it’s our last. Mindfulness is a buzzy word, but this is essentially what it is—continually bringing attention to the here and now, with intention and gratitude. Samuel LeBaron’s new book, Ordinary Deaths, is as much a meditation on this idea as it is an autobiography and collection of tales about dying. Death is, as he writes, “Familiar. Universal. But too often ignored.” All deaths are ordinary, yes, but they are all unique in individual ways—peaceful and painful, tragic and welcomed.
The book traces LeBaron’s history from a child growing up in rural southern Alberta—where he learns of death and rebirth through the cycle of the seasons and the death of family pets—to getting a Ph.D. in psychology, attending medical school in his 40s and then teaching at Stanford University. It’s during his work as a psychologist that he becomes interested in the professional work of death and dying. One of the most emotional stories in the book comes near the beginning, the story of a 6-year-old child, Katie, dying from leukemia. The prose is stripped of unnecessary ornamentation, immediate and raw. Writing of painful bone marrow aspiration procedures and loss, LeBaron writes, “Each child and every procedure was different in some respects, but they all had the same core: intense fear and pain. Then, like a light that goes out with no warning, Katie died.”
Plenty of space in the book is also given to joy and insight. Despite the nature of the material, it’s no disservice to say that it’s a compelling, even page-turning read. LeBaron’s prose is multifaceted and flexible, with both journalistic accuracy and drive as well as metaphor and spirituality, often within the same page. Writing about the death of his patient Anna, he says, “The resident will document the death in the medical record and fill out some forms. The ICU will slide into a deeper quiet, and all will float together in a sea of shadows.”
Looking back at my own career in social work, I’ve seen people die in the myriad ways LeBaron describes. His writing of burnout and carework in even the darkest of times is among the best I’ve read. It’s also a story of life and finding joy and meaning in taking care of each other. As I write, LeBaron himself has been receiving bimonthly IV treatment for stage 4 lung cancer, diagnosed in 2020. Having lived a healthy, active (and non-smoking) life, he writes that the diagnosis was “preposterous.” He describes his treatments as exercises in mindfulness, “IV meditations.” The doctor now the patient, one of many. How ordinary, and yet anything but.
Bryn Evans is a writer and social worker in Calgary.
(Editor’s note: Samuel LeBaron died in late December 2022).
