Written with passion and honesty, this book shares each step of the author’s journey, making an unbearable tale of suicide...
In this debut memoir, a businessman details how he used the most excruciating experience of his life to help save others.
In the early hours of Oct. 15, 2010, Trautwein’s oldest son, Will, a handsome, popular, beloved 15-year-old, wrapped his belt around his neck and hung himself from his bedroom closet door. He left behind his anguished parents, three younger siblings, and an enormous circle of grief-stricken extended family and friends. There were no obvious warning signs and no suicide note, only a penciled picture found in a folder on top of Will’s backpack—a drawing of a boy holding a gun to his head, and then, lower on the page, “a smaller drawing of a man hanging himself.” How could this happen? Why? There are no answers. But readers do learn that Will—so outgoing, so normal—is the very face of teenage suicide. Trautwein, a former professional baseball player and a businessman, knew he must find a way to carve a path for the living to bring himself and his family through the tragedy. His answer was to form The Will to Live Foundation, dedicated to teaching teenagers how to turn to one another for help when they are despondent. In part inspired by the angel Clarence in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, the foundation’s mission is to encourage teenagers to find their own Clarence, that one friend they can turn to when they need a guide back from the precipice. In this stirring account, the author brings readers into the horror of the moment of that terrible October morning: “My boy was hanging from the closet door. He was ghost white....Those beautiful blue eyes…were open, but lifeless... staring straight out at me, right through me.” Tears continually spill from the pages. But then they are dried by Trautwein’s infectious optimism. He has found a way to honor his son and his own survival (“The day The Will to Live Foundation was formed, something extremely special, something truly good began! I felt alive again, really for the first time since Will died”). This skillful memoir is both devastatingly painful and surprisingly filled with hope.
Written with passion and honesty, this book shares each step of the author’s journey, making an unbearable tale of suicide readable and inspirational.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4908-5973-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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