The Book
Donna, A Photo Memoir of Love and Loss
A Memoir of Hope.
Hemingway once said you write a book for two people, yourself and the woman you love.
I wrote Donna, A Photo Memoir of Love and Loss for myself because I wanted to understand my loss, my grief and my love. What I discovered was light entered me through my grief wound, filling me with knowledge of Donna. A greater capacity to love. And a belief in myself.
Donna, A Photo Memoir of Love and Loss for Donna, is my witness to Donna's capacity for love and how she loved me into being. I am witness to beauty within our narrative.
The Book
Donna, A Photo Memoir of Love and Loss is a brave and beautiful photo-narrative of a marriage filled with heart, humor, and tears—without despair. This memoir of hope pieces together a life-time of touching and magical memories, focusing on the journey from terminal diagnosis to death and a husband’s life after death. ‘Donna’ tells the story of how and why it did last 30 years and what came before they met—including a box of never-before seen photos unaided by her voice or history.
Grief does not just happen. Grief is a symptom, an outcome of a loss. I needed to write ‘Donna’ to facilitate my grief journey with a reckless examination of loss.
‘Donna’, the book, is more than a grief narrative. Like Donna, the book is complex with fragments of our story weaved into a message of hope any reader can access. I could not be without Donna and their story. The light that pours into the wound called grief is hope.
This book will make you rethink your perspectives on death and grief. It is a story of hope wrapped in love.
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Some readers’ comments:
“A healing exercise for the writer and the reader.“
"It is beautiful. Funny, complicated, awful, lyrical, and beautiful.”
“A complex story of love and death simply told in words and photos.”
“Raw and touching.”
“A reader’s guide through tragedy, with welcome injections of humor.”
““Now I began to learn that I could be alone and be me and not self-loathe. I accepted that I was not surrendering me to be with her—I was becoming me. Ripping away some of my ego, I found underneath, the person she loved.” I loved this so much.
“Mark, Wanted to tell you again how moved I was by the book and the bravery it took for you to bare your soul like that.”
A true journey in defined grief. A visual reminder of loss and relentless anguish in tiny and unexpected moments. A person, a relationship, in the rawest form.
“Mark- I am floored and awed and in tears and overwhelmed. This is beautiful. So visceral. Even if I didn’t know you or Donna, I can’t imagine being less impacted. Just wow.”