LocalLit book review: a journey from heartbreak to healing

“Rowing my Boat Ashore” by Doris Clark of Minooka is not the type of book many people would choose to read over Mother’s Day weekend.

The book is a memoir about Clark working through her grief at the death of her youngest son Mike.

Here is the book’s Amazon description: “If I have learned anything, it’s to trust my instincts.” Losing a son and gaining an angel is no trade any mother would sign up for, but life’s what’s happening, and we may someday come to understand the turning tides.

“Until then, turn these pages and row with your new friend, from stormy waters to peaceful landings. Author Doris Clark invites you to trust your instincts and join her for a journey through time and space, from heartbreak to healing.”

Clark does not tell her book in any sort of linear format. But she does discuss Mike’s birth, living in an unincorporated area, being a stay-at-home mom, using her creativity to build a career, her two divorces, and her move to Minooka.

She also goes into depth about her son’s death and how she navigated some very deep waters of grief.

Some people might remember the story. It was June 1993 when her son Michael Deutsch, then 16 and a sophomore at Batavia High School, decided to go rafting with his friends on a small plastic raft in the Fox River.

Michael was on one raft; his two friends were on another. Michael fell off his raft when the raft couldn’t travel past the undertow at the base of the dam.

For anyone who has raised teens (I’ve raised six) and you think you know where they are and what they’re doing when you are at work – Clark’s experience is your worst nightmare come true.

Another 24-year-old young man, younger than my youngest son is now, almost died saving Mike, which resulted in his permanent brain injury.

I don’t know how a mother – any parent – finds wholeness and healing after a tragedy of this nature. I have a lot of respect for Clark and for her courage, her perseverance, her stark portrayal of the events surrounding the drowning and the rawness of her grief, and her ability to live again.

Quite a few people, I feel, would benefit from Clark’s book. First, I would recommend it to anyone who’s going through a loss – or has gone through a loss. Although Clark’s book is a memoir, it is also part guidebook for the grieving.

Not only does “Rowing my Boat Ashore” show you the way to the other side of sadness, Clark’s book will remind those who have healed just how they arrived.

But I would also recommend Clark’s book to people who think the unexpected and tragic can’t touch them. It can. It absolutely can. And it can change your life in moments.

I tried to remain calm behind the wheel, not knowing what I would find.

I checked out of reality awhile. A long while.

Mike, did you call out for me? Did you call out for me and I wasn’t there? Allowing myself to ask those two questions took me to the core of it. That is my deepest, darkest fear. It threatens to suck the life out of me. I have learned to steer clear of haunting questions like these in order to stay sane.

A medical professional once told me that the pain of losing a loved one comes in and then subsides, and all you can really do is ride it like you would a wave. That has always helped me.

Buy “Rowing my Boat Ashore” on Amazon.

Know more about LocalLit

Each week LocalLit will deliver an original short and family-friendly story (or a book review) by a local author to the newsletter’s subscribers.

Local writers: Do you have a book you’d like me to review? A short story you’d like to share with LocalLit subscribers?

Please contact me at 815-280-4122 or dunland@shawmedia.com.

Authors with a connection to our readership area may submit. Submission does not guarantee acceptance.

Subscribe to the free newsletter at shawlocal.com/the-herald-news/newsletter/#//.