I've posted a PDF of Room for Two's cover and first chapter if anyone would prefer to read it that way or send it on to someone who might be interested in the book.
He Arrived
My mom called me last night to inform me that my brother's plane was landing and, due to a serious lack of communication, no one was at the airport to greet him. She was hurrying on her way and wanted to know if i wanted to go up and see him since I'd probably arrive before her. I live an hour from the airport but drove as fast as I could through a driving rainstorm to get there and found my brother upbeat, cheerful, and very happy to finally see a familiar face.
I arrived home late and tired, but it was really nice to see him again after two years.
Welcome home, brother. I look forward to catching up with you this weekend.
My Poor Brother
Â
I feel bad for my brother. He should be home after spending the last two years living in Greece.
He's not.
For the last two days he's been stuck in the Athens airport. Fights have been canceled or delayed.
This morning I received short email this morning saying he had been at the airport for six hours waiting to know the status of his flight. He has no idea when he'll leave or when he'll arrive home. His life, for the moment, is in some sort of limbo until the airlines can get their act together and get a flight home.
I replied to his email telling him he's going to be like the Tom Hanks character in the movie Terminal and live at the airport for the rest of his life.
I shouldn't have told him that. Had I gone through the same ordeal when I was trying to leave Bulgaria, I don't think I would have been too happy at the comparison.
Thankfully my brother is very good natured and will be so happy to be home that we'll all laugh about the delays when we finally see him.
I just hope that's sooner, rather than later.
This Weekend
Sometimes you have weekends that you really look forward to. This is one of those weekend for me.
- Our middle child turns 2.
- My brother comes home after living in Greece for the last two years.
- We're taking the kids to see some nearby sights for the first time.
- Marathon Girl and I get a night out by ourselves.
There is much to look forward to this weekend.
News Article on Room for Two
An article about Room for Two appeared in The Signpost, the paper of Weber State University, today. I've pasted the text of the article below. However, if you read it on the The Signpost website, you can see a photo of my late wife -- something I've never posted before. WSU alumnus writes about spouse's suicide in new novel, 'Room for Two'
by Seth Durfee
"Young pregnant wife commits suicide," that's a headline, which never ran - although it happened to author Abel Keogh's wife. Krista killed herself in November 2001.
"There's a taboo about suicide," said Keogh, who decided to help break that taboo by writing "Room for Two", a novel about his late wife's suicide.
Keogh, a Weber State University alumni, released his book August 2007. The book gives a straightforward look at his experience with his wife Krista, also a Weber State University graduate, who suffered from depression. She committed suicide at age 25 when she was seven months pregnant with their first child.
Keogh, who has since remarried and is the father of three children.
"After my late wife Krista's death," Keogh said, while holding two squirming sons on his lap in the living room of his Utah County home. "I tried to find on the Internet even one example of another pregnant woman committing suicide. I couldn't."
Keogh said a local newspaper ran an ongoing story about his wife's death for a day or two, but as soon as the paper realized was a suicide, all coverage stopped.
"You're not supposed to talk about it," he said.
The book relates the events following Krista's suicide. Keogh stressed the fact that he did not write the book to say, "I got through it and so can you." He wrote it to try and chip away at the taboo surrounding suicide. "People should know that it's OK to talk about," Keogh said.
He made almost daily entries on a blog after his wife's death.
"Ninety percent of what you find in the book is not in the blog and, in my opinion, the real meat of the story."
Keogh's motivation for writing the book is very personal.
"I didn't feel like there was a story out there that was really helpful to me." He said he wanted to write the book that he would have pulled off the shelf after his wife died.
"I've gotten a few e-mails from people who haven't necessarily had a suicide in their life, and they say how much it's helped them," Keogh said. At the time he recognized there was a problem but he didn't know what to do.
"Looking back I can see that there are things that weren't right. If she hadn't been pregnant I would have asked 'What's wrong with you,'" Keogh said.
For those who don't know what to do, Diane George, a licensed clinical social worker at the McKay-Dee Behavioral Health Institute in Ogden has some insights.
"Signs of depression can be Anhedonia, or a lack of interest from activities that normally provide pleasure, lack of appetite, weight gain or weight loss," George said. "People suffering from depression can also become isolated from friends and family or have a lack of concentration."
George said if an individual is experiencing these types of changes or feelings, talking to someone who will listen is a good course of action.
"Take a stress inventory," George said, "Reevaluate your status. Decide if the depression is situational or biological"
George said those who commit suicide often feel hopeless and alone.
Rebekah Clements, long-time friend of both Keogh and Krista, said she is still trying to cope with the guilt that came following the unexpected suicide.
"Krista's story was even more difficult to talk about because she was pregnant," Clements said. "There wasn't a support group for something like that. We really were alone." Clements said that it was very difficult when Keogh gave her one of the first copies of the manuscript. "There had been five years from the suicide to when I read it. It opened up a lot of memories that I've tried to forget," she said.
There isn't anything you can say about a situation like that, explained Clements, but maybe this is the only chance to bring a silver lining to the whole story. "I hope Krista would think two things about the book: that she would be proud of Abel for writing it and that the book will help people," Clements said.
"If I can help even one person feel like they aren't alone with something like what I went through," Keogh said, "then I did what I wanted to do."
Quick Update
I apologize for the dearth of updates. I've been using a lot of my free time writing my second book or working on some promotional efforts for Room for Two -- many of which should be bearing fruit over the next month. Stay tuned.
Getting Over Grief and We Are Marshall
Â
Anyone looking for a good DVD to rent this weekend might want to consider the recently released We Are Marshall.
For those who are rolling your eyes thinking that We Are Marshall is just another sports movie about a team that has to pull together and win, you're only partially right. The movie is about building a new football team from scratch after most of the players and coaches of Marshall University are killed in a tragic plane crash in November 1970. But that's just the setting of the movie.
We Are Marshall is really a movie about dealing with death and loss and how individuals and communities cope with the loss of loved ones. It's a movie about those who choose to move on and those who want to let the past hold them back.
And the desire to be held back by some sense of mourning is tempting. The university considers canceling the football program but only the quick thinking of one of the surviving football players convinces the board of trustees to let the football program continue.
Then there's Red Dawson (Matthew Fox), the only member of the coaching staff who wasn't on the plane because he opted to drive home and make a recruiting stop on the way. He's wracked by survivor's guilt, the loss of his mentor Marshall's head coach Rick Tolley (an un-credited roll by Robert Patrick) -- and the fact that he personally recruited many of the players who died after promising their mothers he'd watch after them while they were on the team.
After the program is reinstated, Dawson is offered the head coach job. He turns it down and spends his time building a shed in his back yard. Returning to football -- a game that he loves -- is something he doesn't want to do.
Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey) takes the job that no coach in the country wants: building a football team from scratch in the shadow of dead players and coaches. Not only does he have to field a team, he has to help Dawson (who finally agrees to be an assistant coach for one final year) and the university president, other players, and members of the community to know that the best way to accept their loss and climb out from under the shadow of the dead is to play football.
In one emotional scene following the blowout loss to Morehead State, Dawson tells Lengyel that they aren't honoring the dead because he thinks the team is playing poorly and losing. Lengyel fires back that the Marshall football program isn't about winning right now but healing the community and the individuals who are still mourning over loved ones. He tells Dawson that building a football program, even one that's only marginally successful is about giving the people a chance to rebuild their lives. He tells Dawson:
One day, not today, not tomorrow, not this season, probably not next season either but one day, you and I are gonna wake up and suddenly we're gonna be like every other team in every other sport where winning is everything and nothing else matters. And when that day comes, well that's...that's when we'll honor them [the dead players and coaches].
In another scene, the morning before Marshall's home opener, Lengyel takes his team to the resting spot of six unidentified players. He gives them an inspiring speech about the dead players and coaches but at the end proclaims, "The funerals end today!"
His message is clear: stop living in and thinking about the past. Instead start doing what you were put on Earth to do and start living again.
Despite the dark and sad feeling that penetrates the movie, we see how players, individuals, and the community are slowly moving on with their lives.
We see an unopened case of beer that was to be used to console the players before 1970 teams' win before the fateful crash, sitting untouched until a new player opens a can and is joined by others. We see the fiance of one of the dead players take the advice of the should-have-been father-in-law and leave Hunington, West Virginia to move on with her life and not be held back by the past. And we see how the community celebrates the re-built team's surprising victory against Xavier by staying on the field for hours after the game.
Sadly, not everyone makes the decision to move on and we are shown how their decisions contrast with those who move forward.
Losing a loved one can be difficult and We Are Marshall portrays that agony in very heart wrenching scenes. But it contains a message of hope and shows how an individual and community can move on after the tragic death of a loved one -- even many loved ones -- and become stronger in the process.
Ten Pounds to Go
We interrupt this regularly scheduled blog update to announce I benched 200 lbs. today!!!! I'm 10 lbs. from benching my weight and life-long goal.
You can now return to your normal web-related activities.
Book Review: Want to Marry A Good Man? Here's How!
By far the most common subject that fills my email box is from women who are dating widowers who, for one reason or another, refuse to give the girlfriend the love and affection she wants or are reluctant to commit to a more serious relationship.
It's usually assumed that the reason for his lack of commitment or affection is because the man is a widower and still grieving over the late wife. While that may be the case for one out of 20 emails, for the most part the widower is simply using his late wife death as an excuse to behave badly or their seemingly unwillingness to appreciate, value, and love these women. In reality, it doesn't matter how long the wife's been dead, if the widower truly loves another woman, he won't let anything hold him back from moving the relationship forward and treating the woman like she wants (and deserves) to be treated.
While my advice to these women is usually to end relationships that aren't going anywhere, it's been frustrating not having a good resource that I can recommend that can them identify relationships that aren't going anywhere or may be abusive before they become too emotionally involved with that person.
Fortunately, there's now a book that does just that.
Want to Marry A Good Man? Here's How! by Alisa Goodwin Snell is a complete guide to having the confidence to find a good man while being able to identify potentially abusive and how to know if a relationship is going anywhere within the first few weeks of dating someone.
(Full disclosure: I had Snell, a licensed marriage and family therapist, on my former radio show several times and read and provided feedback on early drafts of the book.)
Snell does an excellent job of identifying warning sings to watch for when you date someone and provides some good timelines to avoid rushing into a bad relationship. She also provides some excellent tips for flirting, acting confident when out on a date -- even if you're feeling insecure -- and making the man work for your love and the relationship instead of just giving it to him. Snell also provides great insight to the male mind and nails what men value in a relationship -- something a lot of women don't seem to know or act on.
Part of the reason I liked this book so much was because I thought a lot about my relationship with Marathon Girl while I was reading it -- especially the things that she did right that helped our relationship move forward. For example, after Marathon Girl decided she was willing to date a widower, she knew the importance of making me work for her love and prove to her that I was willing to form a new relationship with her instead of letting my love for the late wife hold me back. (For those who have read my book, contrast Marathon Girl's behavior with the girl I dated who basically threw herself at me.)
This book was also revelatory to me as it showed the commonality between Marathon Girl and my late wife and why I fell head over heels for her. (This will all be detailed in my next blog post.)
Want to Marry A Good Man doesn't contain the trite advice you'll find in most relationship books. Snell knows what she's talking about. As a guy I can tell you she knows what men like in women and how they think. Using this book as a guide can get women past the losers and jerks and on the right course to finding someone that will truly love them.
I highly recommend Want to Marry A Good Man not only to women who are dating widowers but any single women who are looking for a good man to have a lasting, long term relationship with (read: marriage).
This book was just released last month and, like my book, is still making its way to bookstores. Your best bet for purchasing a copy is via Amazon
Stupid Tigers
The Tigers' season is all but over. Should the Yankees beat the awful Devil Rays tonight, they'll clinch the AL wild card birth leaving the Tigers out of the post season. The Tigers had the best record at the All-Star Break. Then they sputtered, gave up leads, let lesser teams beat them down the stretch. In a way it's a blessing they aren't joining the post season because they aren't playing like the team that won the AL pennant last year. Instead they're playing like the team that gave the World Series to the Cardinals.
After years of losing seasons and awful performances, you'd think I'd be happy with the fact that the Tigers put together a winning season and are a team that could still contend for a post season birth next year.
While there is some consolation in those facts, I'd have an easier time living with their failure to make the playoffs if they hadn't given that spot to the Yankees.