A Good (read: Difficult) Book

I stumbled across a book last week. While perusing ESPN.com on my lunchbreak like I do most days, I read an article by David Fleming. At the bottom, was the following paragraph:

David Fleming is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. His first book was "Noah's Rainbow: a Father's Emotional Journey from the Death of his Son to the Birth of his Daughter". His next book, based on the controversial 1925 NFL Pottsville Maroons (ESPN Books 2007) has been optioned as a movie by Sentinel Entertainment. Contact him at Dave.Fleming@espn3.com

My thought process, after it, went something like this: "Pottsville Maroons? I wonder if that's the team from Pottsville, PA that if I remember correctly, got screwed out of the NFL title one year..."

Then, what I read REALLY sank in. "Noah's Rainbow? Father's Emotional Journey? Death of his Son? I should click that link."

So, I did. And I found this book. I found the publisher's website, and was able to read the first chapter online for free. So...I did. And the emotional impact of reading about another father who lost a son they were anticipating so greatly hit me square in the chest, and I spent the rest of the day having a VERY difficult day at work. But I knew...I just knew that it was important for me to read this book. So, on my way home from work, I looked at 2 bookstores on the route home, and neither had the book, nor could they get it.

DrummerWife tried to find the book while shopping over the last weekend. No luck. So, we ordered it off of Amazon.com. It arrived Wednesday, and since, I've been painfully reading through it, about a chapter or two a day.

I say painfully, because it is very hard to read another man's story, when it is so similar to my own. It has forced me to address a lot of issues that I attempted to brush under the carpet, or pretend that I was OK with. When it is presented to me, in the guise of someone else's story, I can so easily see the people Mr. Fleming describes being representative of people who have appeared in, returned to, or have always been in my own life throughout this whole ordeal. I can read about an emotional response that Mr. Fleming had to the death of son, and know that there was at least one moment where I felt that exact same emotion. I can read him say how much of a help his (whole extended) family and friends have been to he and his wife, and know with absolute certainty, that he is describing my own family and friends. He says how helpful a particular nurse was while his wife recovered in the hospital, and I can pick out SEVERAL nurses who fit the description of Mr. Fleming's.

I've only completed chapter 4, and I have many yet to go, but this IS an important book for me to read. Even though I do so through tears. This is just an important book.