When my grandfather nudged my shoulder at four a.m. on the morning of March 6, 1969, and whispered, “Get up. We need to go to the hospital,” I did not imagine my life was about to change irrevocably or that I would need 45 years to recover.
Three days later, my mother perched on the edge of my sister’s twin bed, facing my brother, my sister, and me. The dress she wore to my father’s funeral was snug around her thin hips. She wore the makeup of a woman who was confident and secure, but the dark circles around her eyes gave her away.
“We will not talk about this,” she instructed. “We will go on with our lives. We will be strong.”
Thus began a period of silence and intense grieving that waxed and waned through my years as other losses pile on but never subsided.
In 2014, my brother, sister, and I set out together, traveling across four countries in a five-passenger van, meeting with people who had a story to tell. Repeatedly, we sensed our father’s presence—on Fox Red at Omaha Beach, at Hill 314 in Mortain, France, in Fort Eben-Emael in Belgium, in the Rolduc Abbey in the Netherlands, in the faces of two little girls in Malmedy in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium.
Otherwise, I'm Fine: A Memoir weaves the past with the present and transcends place, from the American South to a German backyard barbecue, from a fourteen-year-old’s dark bedroom to an 11th century monastery in 2014. It is the story of prolonged grief, the resilience of family, and enduring love that breaks us apart and ultimately binds us together.
