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Swimming With Maya: A Mother's Story (2013)

by Eleanor Vincent(Favorite Author)

3.78 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0988439042 (ISBN13: 9780988439047)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Dream of Things

review 1: this is a powerful account of the experience of a mother and her first daughter's death from a tragic accident. Intertwined through this book fraught with raw emotion,she begins to tell her own story of her childhood with a father who dabbled in homosexuality, a mother who eventually came out as a lesbian without really ever telling the children, the violence in her relationships, two abortions prior to the birth of Maya, two failed marriages, and several failed relationships. Through the death of her daughter she had to come to terms with her own life. It is a heart rending book, beginning with the terrible telephone call and the rush to the hospital to find out her daughter suffered a traumatic brain injury from which she could never recover. It is also her journey a... mores she allows her daughter to be an organ donor and eventually hears her daughter's heart beating in the chest of the recipient. So many emotions, so many tears, so many joys and sorrows. Thankfully there is an epilogue, and an afterward..........otherwise this story would not have been complete.
review 2: I'd like to say first, that everyone grieves in their own way...and there isn't a right way to grieve. BUT, the grief expressed in this book was exhausting and unrelenting. Illogical guilt was carried by the mother, and it seemed she was consumed for years with the tragedy of losing one of her girls...how unfortunate for the remaining daughter I thought. I think the mother reclaimed some semblance of a functional existence at the end of the book, but I was in such a rush to end the crushing grief that I flew through, exhausted. I don't plan ever, to finish a book again that could have easily explained the tragedy, the aftermath, and the rebirth of lives affected with equal parts. I was left feeling like I would have liked to know more about the years AFTER death and how the mother survived. Those of us who experience a loss of life of a friend or loved one at a young age tend to gravitate towards books on this topic, looking for encouragement and "how-to", not for more heavy grief with no positivity. I figure, why open old wounds when it will make me feel worse for nothing. So, if you need to be crushed by grief, read this book... less

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