I saw Andrea Adelson's tweet a few days ago in which she mentioned the recently published book by Ivan Maisel about the death (i.e., suicide) of Ivan's son Max in 2015. I Keep Trying to Catch His Eye: A Memoir of Loss, Grief and Love
I'd just finished a book and was looking for my next read (well, Audible listen anyway), so I decided to give it a shot. Ivan is the narrator and how he's able to keep it together through the reading of the book is beyond me. I finished the book in three days.
An online review summed the book up perfectly:
A chronicle of the heartbreaking aftermath of a son’s suicide.
In February 2015, Maisel, a sportswriter who spent a 20-year career covering college football for ESPN, learned that his son Max, a college junior, was missing, his car found abandoned near a lake in upstate New York. Soon it became clear that Max, who had long suffered from emotional problems, had killed himself. Maisel’s raw, moving memoir is both a tribute to Max and an anatomical dissection of a father’s grief. Unable, and unwilling, to “move on,” Maisel learned to coexist with grief by understanding it as an expression of love. “Seeing grief as love helped me handle its all-consuming nature,” Maisel writes. “Seeing grief as love made it seem less alien, less painful.” Yet he was beset by guilt over not being able to rescue his son from the depression and hopelessness that led to his death. Although a psychologist assured him “there’s zero, zero, zero, zero chance” that someone intent on suicide can be stopped, the author could not help but feel complicit. His denial about the seriousness of his son’s problems, he reflects, was “partly rooted in my genuine faith that he would ultimately succeed, and mostly rooted in my fear of admitting to myself how desperate his mental condition might be.” Max exhibited problems even as a young child. He had few friends (“my memories of Max are of him alone,” Maisel writes), and he had physical difficulties: “He never slept well. Ever. He had trouble gripping a pencil, which led to handwriting that started out hard to decipher and never improved. He had the most ear infections.” Sadly, he saw the world as “half empty.” As the author recounts the years since Max’s death, he acknowledges ways that he, his family, his connection to his work, and his view of the world have all changed—though “the permanence of the loss” remains.
An intimate chronicle of abiding love.
The recounting of Max's death is heartbreaking enough, but to hear the rawness of Ivan's struggle with the "what ifs" and his lamentation of often putting work first (at the expense of his family) seemed to magnify the pain. It was also interesting to hear about how his College Gameday interview with the parents of Tyler Helinski came about (I vividly remember that piece on Gameday). I don't come to tears often, but that interview with the Helinskis and this book both made me choke up.
Not to turn this into The Dungeon Book Club (then again, there is a TV Show Recommendation Thread), but given his connection to college sports (and the fact that most of us have likely seen his columns and t.v. pieces) I'd recommend the book. It's heartfelt and raw. If you have kids then it'll hit especially close to the heart.
I'd just finished a book and was looking for my next read (well, Audible listen anyway), so I decided to give it a shot. Ivan is the narrator and how he's able to keep it together through the reading of the book is beyond me. I finished the book in three days.
An online review summed the book up perfectly:
A chronicle of the heartbreaking aftermath of a son’s suicide.
In February 2015, Maisel, a sportswriter who spent a 20-year career covering college football for ESPN, learned that his son Max, a college junior, was missing, his car found abandoned near a lake in upstate New York. Soon it became clear that Max, who had long suffered from emotional problems, had killed himself. Maisel’s raw, moving memoir is both a tribute to Max and an anatomical dissection of a father’s grief. Unable, and unwilling, to “move on,” Maisel learned to coexist with grief by understanding it as an expression of love. “Seeing grief as love helped me handle its all-consuming nature,” Maisel writes. “Seeing grief as love made it seem less alien, less painful.” Yet he was beset by guilt over not being able to rescue his son from the depression and hopelessness that led to his death. Although a psychologist assured him “there’s zero, zero, zero, zero chance” that someone intent on suicide can be stopped, the author could not help but feel complicit. His denial about the seriousness of his son’s problems, he reflects, was “partly rooted in my genuine faith that he would ultimately succeed, and mostly rooted in my fear of admitting to myself how desperate his mental condition might be.” Max exhibited problems even as a young child. He had few friends (“my memories of Max are of him alone,” Maisel writes), and he had physical difficulties: “He never slept well. Ever. He had trouble gripping a pencil, which led to handwriting that started out hard to decipher and never improved. He had the most ear infections.” Sadly, he saw the world as “half empty.” As the author recounts the years since Max’s death, he acknowledges ways that he, his family, his connection to his work, and his view of the world have all changed—though “the permanence of the loss” remains.
An intimate chronicle of abiding love.
The recounting of Max's death is heartbreaking enough, but to hear the rawness of Ivan's struggle with the "what ifs" and his lamentation of often putting work first (at the expense of his family) seemed to magnify the pain. It was also interesting to hear about how his College Gameday interview with the parents of Tyler Helinski came about (I vividly remember that piece on Gameday). I don't come to tears often, but that interview with the Helinskis and this book both made me choke up.
Not to turn this into The Dungeon Book Club (then again, there is a TV Show Recommendation Thread), but given his connection to college sports (and the fact that most of us have likely seen his columns and t.v. pieces) I'd recommend the book. It's heartfelt and raw. If you have kids then it'll hit especially close to the heart.
