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Description
As a thirty-five-year-old woman, C. Comfort Shields is haunted by the memory of her first true love's devastating suicide eighteen months after she met him at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. While searching for answers about Ben's death and her place in his life, she also begins her own personal journey of self-discovery. This symphonic memoir of life and death, love and anger, and guilt and forgiveness sways back and forth-in an extraordinarily candid narrative-from the love story of a nineteen-year-old to her reflections years later. She shares her insights into the survivor's complex as she learns to live, love, and trust again. As a mother, wife, and teacher, she realizes the profound influence she has in the lives of others but also knows that she cannot guarantee their future, as she could not control Ben's. Intimate and frank, Surviving Ben's Suicide follows Shields's passage through the stages of grief. Her story symbolizes how memories of the past and new life experiences are interwoven. The reality of surviving Ben's suicide was not glamorous, but she grew as a person and came out on the other side with a deeply satisfying life.… (more)
User reviews
When life ends by one own's hand there are so many questions that come up, so much pain, guilt, suffering and loneliness. A feeling that being all alone, maybe you are responsible, you MUST be responsible. I was so interested in the amount of care Shields put into explaining the sickness, the disease, the illness that lead up to Ben committing suicide. The irate phone calls of blame, the pushing away and pulling in causing Comfort to feel the burden as a harsh reality.
This is not a self- help book, well, it is and it isn't. It is a memoir of a woman who experienced the death of a boyfriend, the suicidal death. Shields is changed through this blow, learning more about herself, more about life and death and relationships. I admire Surviving Ben's Suicide in that it has gone where no other book has gone before, in being the first literary memoir about this topic. Suicide is hard to understand, but even harder to cope with. This is an excellent book to take with you on the journey. An Excellent read for anyone, not just those who have had a loved one commit suicide.