In WW2 Bill
Macauliffe developed torticollis; two days after surgery to correct it, he
tried to kill himself. He spent the last 20 years of his life fighting mental
illness ultimately dying unattended and possibly not reported for at least a
day. He is called weak and told to just get himself together, but in reality he
was a very strong man, holding it together to work and help raise a family,
falling apart on weekends and pulling himself back together Sunday nights. He
embarrassed, frustrated, and scared his family, but Jody, his daughter, never
stopped loving him.
This book is
Jody’s memoir of what it was like growing up with Bill as a father, and of her
search for answers. It jumps back and forth in time, visiting Bill’s childhood,
his time in the military and his death in a hospital and right into the present
as Jody talks to doctors, trying to find out what Bill really had. Did the
surgery for the torticollis do something to his mind, or did he have
preexisting mental illness? His surgery took place on the day she was born; she
never knew her father as a man without mental illness. It’s a touching book.
The above is an associate link. If you click through it and buy the book, Amazon gives me a few cents.
No comments:
Post a Comment