Genre: Memoir/Travel
Publish Date: 01/12/2014
Publisher: Self Published
Event organized by: Literati Author Services, Inc.
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Book Synopsis:
Join award-winning memoirist Marlayna Glynn Brown on a tender journey to understand the father she never knew in life by spreading his ashes around the world after his death. A relatable must-read for anyone who has lost a loved one, this memoir lights the way to afterlife and afterdeath where forgiveness supersedes pain, blame, remorse and regret. In her effort to understand the generational effects of alcoholism and subsequent dysfunctional adult relationships, Marlayna takes her youngest son and her father's ashes on a personal journey, embarking on an emotional voyage to both physical and mental states of being. She confronts her own existence as a mother and a daughter, seeking and ultimately finding peace with her disappointment, anger, failed marriage, and complex relationships with her own four children.
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Rest In Places: My Father's Post-Life Journey Around The World
Excerpt #2
by Marlayna Glynn Brown
I sit at his bedside, my eyes focused on the thin plastic tube that brings oxygen to his nose. What a strange thought that my father can no longer breath without this tube. Years of smoking Kool menthols have eradicated any ability he has to breathe without aid now. So the thin plastic tube hooks over his ears, allowing him to pull weak breaths in and out of cancered lungs. My father, who once ran races and jogged around our city parks and swam off the Mexican shore in the Pacific ocean he loved so much, cannot breathe without the cool oxygen of this artificial tube.
He tries to talk but his words are mired in wet coughs, rendering conversation cruel and laborious.
That tube stands between me and all that I want to know about him. I take his thin hand in mine and look him in the eye. “I'm glad you were my father.”
He nods once; a regal gesture of acceptance, resignation or possibly both. “Me too.”
There are so many questions I want to ask him, so much I want to know about his childhood, his life, his feelings, his essence.
Unasked, as if he would try to explain the one thing I might want to know, he volunteers, “Some people were just born to drink.”
“How can you say such a thing?”
“Look at me,” he coughs.
“You woke up every day and made the choice to drink. You could have changed your life any time you wanted.”
“No. Couldn't.”
Is this then the final damning curse of a life of alcoholism, the acceptance of no reality that does not include alcohol? “You could have stopped drinking any time you wanted. People do it every day. You could have known me. You could have known your grandchildren. They are such great kids and you don't even know them.”
“I'd been a rat for so long. Thought I might as well stay a rat.”
I don't understand this kind of thinking; this acceptance of anything less than the highest and best. It's the final and saddest nail in the coffin of my relationship with my father.
During our last day together, I hear myself telling him that I want him to be at peace. I want him to be out of pain. I know even as the words are tumbling from my consciousness and out of my mouth that my father's death is not about me; his passing is not dependent in any way upon what I want.
It is his journey and I am no longer on it.
Then again, I never really was in the first place.
For how could you ever be on a journey that is not your own?
Marlayna Glynn Brown is a best selling American memoirist, award winning photographer, screenwriter and yogi. Immediately upon publication Marlayna’s first book became and still remains one of the most highly rated author memoirs on Amazon, and placed as a finalist in the 2013 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
Marlayna’s extensive travels, BA in Literature and MS in Human Services have honed her remarkable gifts in observing and recording the ways of humanity. Her works include:
Overlay: A Tale of One Girl’s Life in 1970s Las Vegas
City of Angeles
Big As All Hell And Half Of Texas
The Trilogy: Memoirs of Marlayna Glynn Brown
One Day The Invitations Will Stop Arriving: A Travel Memoir
Lovers, Liars and Lotharios: Lessons Learned and Self Esteem Earned
Rest In Places: My Father’s Post-Life Journey Around The World
The Nomadic Memoirist: Memoir Writing Tips For Authors
The Nomadic Memoirist: Award-Winning and Best-Selling Promotion and Marketing Tips for Authors
2 comments:
Sounds intriguing.
Thank you for the mention!
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