Carnett: A book for the ages reinterpreted

17-48-70.

Sounds like the combination to my old high school gym locker. Actually, those are specific ages in my life that relate to a certain book I first read years ago.

The book — the true story of a young boy who tragically dies of a brain tumor at age 17 — is titled “Death Be Not Proud.” The boy’s father, John Gunther, with brooding eloquence, fashioned the memoir in 1949.

The book’s title was taken from English poet and cleric John Donne’s work, “Holy Sonnet X.” Gunther was an American journalist of considerable acclaim. In the book, he relates the heart-wrenching story of his son, Johnny, and the myriad medical professionals who tended to his terrible affliction.

The book became a bestseller and remains popular today.

I first read “Death Be Not Proud” in 1962 as a 17-year-old high school student. I submitted a book report on its subject matter to my senior English teacher. After the report was wrenched from my typewriter, I attempted to put the whole business behind me.

To no avail. I never forgot the book.

My first reading — as an innocent — proved rather harrowing. I saw the story through the eyes of the boy. It became, for me, an excruciatingly painful journey with a sadly predictable outcome.

Still, I couldn’t put it down.

I was every bit the hypochondriac in those unseasoned days of youth. For a time after reading the book, even the slightest twinge of a sinus headache could launch me into the certain conclusion that I too had a brain tumor.

The book rocked my world.

I spent time reflecting on it — from a father’s standpoint — when I lost my 25-year-old son to a cruel accident in 1993. Coincidentally, I was 48 at the time, the same age as Gunther when he wrote the book.

I wanted to go back and reread it at the time but couldn’t. It simply would have been too painful. I left Gunther’s memoir for another time, thinking that that time probably would never arrive.

As a troglodyte, I can’t anticipate technology.

In my seventh decade, it was an easy flick-of-the-finger download on my wireless e-reader. Voila! There it was: the book that had forever haunted me.

A few days ago I reread it as a 70-year-old grandfather. I absorbed the story from a septuagenarian’s ancient perch. I’m by no means omniscient, but I’ve learned a thing or two about life since the first reading.

I’d forgotten the book’s details but not its central message: “Appreciate life!” John and Johnny have both been dead for decades, but their advice still resonates with this codger.

“All the wonderful things in life are so simple that one is not aware of their wonder until they are beyond touch,” wrote Gunther’s wife, Frances, in a moving chapter she penned for the book. “Never have I felt the wonder and beauty and joy of life so keenly as now in my grief that Johnny is not here to enjoy them.”

Her message: Savor the moment.

Gunther describes the horrid and inexorable advance of the disease that took his son’s life, and he even discloses a gentle mercy: “The tumor was, God knows, murderous enough; but if it had been in another place in the brain it could have produced even more terrible disasters. Some people with brain injuries twitch incessantly; some cannot walk or talk; some can only pronounce parts of each successive word; many lose their memory.

“… Johnny did not lose function. He lived almost a year after this, and he did not die like a vegetable. He died like a man, with perfect dignity.”

Gunther captures the final moments of Johnny’s life with tender reverence: “Then, little by little the life-color left his face, his lips became blue, and his hands were cold. What is life? It departs covertly. Like a thief, Death took him.”

A grieving father reaches across the decades to beseech us to live every moment.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.