双语·当呼吸化为空气 保罗所传递的信息

保罗在《当呼吸化为空气》中所传递的信息，很强烈，也很独特，但也有些孤独。和这个故事并行的，是围绕在他身边的爱与温暖，当然也有适度给予的空间和放任。在时间与空间中，我们都有着不同的自我。这其中的他是个医生，也是个病患，并处于医患关系当中。他在字里行间的个性非常鲜明，显然他时日无多，显然他是个永无止境的奋斗者，当然还有其他的自我，是书中没有充分展现的。比如保罗的幽默感，他是个很调皮很有趣的人；还有他的体贴和温柔，他对朋友家人的重视。但这就是他写的书，是他在这段时间里想要发出的声音、传递的信息。需要写下来的时候，他就写下来了。说心里话，我最想念的那个保罗，竟然不是与我初坠爱河、风度翩翩、身强体健的保罗，而是生命最后一年那个全神贯注、散发着人性光辉的男人，是那个写下这本书的保罗——身体病弱，但精神不倒。
Paul’s voice in When Breath Becomes Air is strong and distinctive, but also somewhat solitary. Parallel to this story are the love and warmth and spaciousness and radical permission that surrounded him. We all inhabit different selves in space and time. Here he is as a doctor, as a patient, and within a doctor-patient relationship. He wrote with a clear voice, the voice of someone with limited time, a ceaseless striver, though there were other selves as well. Not fully captured in these pages are Paul’s sense of humor—he was wickedly funny—or his sweetness and tenderness, the value he placed on relationships with friends and family. But this is the book he wrote; this was his voice during this time; this was his message during this time; this was what he wrote when he needed to write it. Indeed, the version of Paul I miss most, more even than the robust, dazzling version with whom I first fell in love, is the beautiful, focused man he was in his last year, the Paul who wrote this book—frail but never weak.

保罗很为这本书自豪，这算是充分体现了他对文学的热爱。他曾经说过，比起《圣经》，诗歌更能给他心灵的抚慰。这本书也展现了他的能力，能够从自己的生活出发，讲述一个与死神同行的故事，扣人心弦，充满力量。2013年5月1日，保罗给最好的朋友写邮件，告诉他自己得了癌症。邮件里写道：“好消息是，我已经比勃朗特三姐妹中的两个，还有济慈和斯蒂芬·克莱恩都活得长了。坏消息是，我还什么都没写呢。”那之后他就走上了“转型之旅”，满怀激情地从过去的事业投入新的事业，从丈夫的角色转变为一个父亲，当然，最终也完成由生到死的转变。这是我们所有人都将面对的终极转变。我很骄傲，在这整个过程中充当他的伴侣，包括陪伴他写这本书。写作令他满怀希望地活着，就像他以美妙的文采在书中写的：人的特性和机遇，有着一种魔力。也是这种魔力赋予了他希望，一直写下去，直到生命的尽头。
Paul was proud of this book, which was a culmination of his love for literature—he once said that he found poetry more comforting than Scripture—and his ability to forge from his life a cogent, powerful tale of living with death. When Paul emailed his best friend in May 2013 to inform him that he had terminal cancer, he wrote, “The good news is I’ve already outlived two Bront. s, Keats, and Stephen Crane. The bad news is that I haven’t written anything.” His journey thereafter was one of transformation—from one passionate vocation to another, from husband to father, and finally, of course, from life to death, the ultimate transformation that awaits us all. I am proud to have been his partner throughout, including while he wrote this book, an act that allowed him to live with hope, with that delicate alchemy of agency and opportunity that he writes about so elo-quently, until the very end.

保罗被安放进一个柳木棺椁，葬在圣克鲁斯山上一片田野的边缘，可以俯瞰太平洋和海岸线。沿途充满了回忆——步履轻快的远足、海鲜大餐、庆生的鸡尾酒。两个月前的1月份，一个和暖的周末，我们在山下一个沙滩上，把卡迪胖乎乎的小脚浸入咸咸的海水中。保罗对于自己死后肉身的去向并不在意，让我们代表他做决定。我想我们这个选择还不错。保罗的坟茔朝西，越过大约八公里翠绿的山巅，与大海遥遥相望。他周围的山丘野草丛生，针叶树木繁茂，黄色大戟属植物漫山遍野。在坟前坐下，你能听到风在吹拂，鸟在啁啾，还有花栗鼠窸窸窣窣匆忙的脚步。一路走到这里，他付出了很多努力。他的坟冢也充满了坚强与荣耀，他值得拥有这样一块安眠之地——我们都值得拥有这样一块安眠之地。这个地方让我想起祖父从前很喜欢的一句祷告：“我们会在不知不觉间徐徐上升，来到永恒的山巅，那里的风多么凉爽，那里的景色多么辉煌。”
Paul was buried in a willow casket at the edge of a field in the Santa Cruz Mountains, overlooking the Pacific Ocean and a coastline studded with memories—brisk hikes, seafood feasts, birthday cocktails. Two months before, on a warm weekend in January, we’d dipped Cady’s chubby feet into the briny water at a beach below. He was unattached to the fate of his body after he died, and he left it to us to make decisions on his behalf. I believe we chose well. Paul’s grave looks west, over five miles of green hillcrests, to the ocean. Around him are hills covered in wild grass, coniferous trees, and yellow euphorbia. As you sit down, you hear wind, chirping birds, the scuffling of chipmunks. He made it here on his own terms, and his grave site feels appropriately full of rugedness and honor, a place he deserves to be—a place we all deserve to be. I am reminded of a line from a blessing my grandfather liked: “We shall rise insensibly, and reach the tops of the everlasting hills, where the winds are cool and the sight is glorious.”

但总是待在这里也并非易事。山顶的天气变化多端，而保罗被埋在山的迎风面，我来看他的时候，分别遭遇过烈日、浓雾和刺骨的冷雨。平常的日子这里有多宁静，天气差起来就有多不舒服——既孤独静谧，又饱受外界环境的影响，正如死亡，正如悲痛。但这一切当中都蕴含了美，我觉得这样很好，很恰如其分。
And yet this is not always an easy place to be. The weather is unpredictable. Because Paul is buried on the windward side of the mountains, I have visited him in blazing sun, shrouding fog and cold, stinging rain. It can be as uncomfortable as it is peaceful, both communal and lonely—like death, like grief—but there is beauty in all of it, and I think this is good and right.

我常常去看他，拿着一小瓶马德拉群岛产的酒。我俩是在那里度的蜜月。每次我都会倒一点在草地上给保罗喝。保罗的父母兄弟和我一起来看他时，我一边和他们聊天，一边揉着那些青草，仿佛那是保罗的头发。卡迪也会在小睡前来看爸爸，躺在一块毯子上，注视着头顶的云卷云舒，抓着我们放在那里的鲜花。保罗的追悼会前夜，家里的兄弟姐妹和我，还有保罗最亲密的二十个老朋友一起聚在这里。有那么短暂的一瞬间，我担心坟前的草会不会被我们给破坏了，因为倒了太多威士忌给保罗喝。
I visit his grave often, taking a small bottle of Madeira, the wine of our honeymoon destination. Each time, I pour some out on the grass for Paul. When Paul’s parents and brothers are with me, we talk as I rub the grass as if it were Paul’s hair. Cady visits his grave before her nap, lying on a blanket, watching the clouds pass overhead and grabbing at the flowers we’ve laid down. The evening before Paul’s memorial service, our siblings and I gathered with twenty of Paul’s oldest, closest friends, and I wondered briefly if we’d mar the grass because we poured out so much whiskey.

我给他带去各种各样的鲜花，郁金香、百合、康乃馨……常常在下次去的时候发现花头都被小鹿吃了。这些花儿真是物尽其用，太棒了，保罗对此也应该是乐见的。周围的土地很快被虫儿翻了一遍，自然的进程一刻不停，让我想起保罗过去的所见，也是如今深入我骨髓的记忆：生与死，谁都逃不掉，看不透，但我们有适应和处理的能力；就算无法掌控，也能因为对生与死的探寻，去寻找人生的意义。保罗的遭遇令人悲伤，但他自己，却不是一个悲剧。
Often I return to the grave after leaving flowers— tulips, lilies, carnations—to find the heads eaten by deer. It’s just as good a use for the flowers as any, and one Paul would have liked. The earth is quickly turned over by worms, the processes of nature marching on, reminding me of what Paul saw and what I now carry deep in my bones, too: the inextricability of life and death, and the ability to cope, to find meaning despite this, because of this. What happened to Paul was tragic, but he was not a tragedy.