Love Soars the Skies: A mother's quest to reach her son by Linda Ann Jones is a profound, sincere, open book that at the same time dismembers each stage that brings the pain of losing a loved one and more so for a mother, the loss of a child. At the same time, it also leads you to understand what the process of pain is like and how one should not forget loved ones.
What can a mother write about the loss of a child? There are times when language cannot encompass misfortune. However, Linda has rescued the words she needs to tell her pain. She has protected them in this book, guarding the memory of Nathan, her absent son.
This book is the story of a mother who lives with her memories and makes a pact with them to continue her path through life. It is a personal journey, a complex picture of surviving the death of her son. I feel that I should not say much about this book, because it is better to go without knowing anything. I know it's a story that will stay in my mind for a long time.
This book is many things. A life story told from a personal and captivating prose. A gift from a mother to her son, who opens her heart to the last corner. A journey through his childhood, his adolescence and adulthood. A journey through her interior, her thoughts, and her emotions. We know the pains, fears, adventures, trips. We know all aspects of their life.
Memories told in the first person. From the shadows and addictions that crowd around her son, Linda invites us to get to know part of her family, experience those dinners, lunches, and difficult situations through our imagination. All this is felt and lived, without forgetting the state in which Linda finds herself.
It is one of those books that demand to know more, even though it is well detailed, but the clamour of its pages is so much that you want to know more things. Anyone with empathy can imagine how she felt when writing all this. There are very strong things and others not so much that come in this book.
There are also parts that touch your heart and make you cry your eyes out. Plagued with sad moments but also pleasant memories the book interweaves stories of the writer's life with moments during Nathan's existence. In a society in which pain is seen as something negative, shameful, and reprehensible, Love Soars the Skies is a text worth reading.
Love Soars the Skies is a story with a lot of feeling, and an intense filial love. Linda in each word, each phrase, each sentence undresses her soul in a touching way by telling us memories and anecdotes of her son. It is a story full of contrasts that touch the deepest fibre of the reader.
Personally, I can tell you that Linda has given me an interesting moment to reflect on life, death, family relationships, and the imprint left and left on us by the people with whom we share day to day.
A heart breaking and beautiful book at the same time, Linda’s words make the reader feel inside the book, accompanying her in the arduous task of letting go of one of her loved ones. She has moved me, amazed, and saddened me at the same time.
The author's perspective is raw and genuine in this very human book. There is beauty in her prose, combined with pain and acceptance. In my opinion, it is a metamorphosis as well as a catharsis. The mother who must accept the departure of her son, takes a visceral path towards herself, transforming into an internal voice full of reflections and changes.
A voice that cries out from despair but also from the understanding of what happened. A voice that calms and listens, empathizing with so many others who come to her words in the hope of finding theirs too. I have found in the author's words (and in the many quotes collected, scattered throughout the book) and even in her son's, the words that she wanted to say.
It is difficult to rate an author who opens her heart and tells you how she has lived through the loss of her son for years. The pages of this book are loaded with honesty and pain. It is not a book of overcoming mourning if that is what you imagine. Linda Ann Jones does not come to give you tips to be better after losing a child, because that is almost impossible.
Let's say that she simply seeks to remind us, through her experience, that grief is lived in different ways and that the only thing left for us is to be minimally empathic with those who suffer it in order to accompany them in their pain in the way they want and need. We can only contribute with presence and silence.
What can you say about a book that talks about the loss of a child? Reading this book has been an intense and painful journey through which Linda takes us and that makes us know all her mourning for the death of her son Nathan. The book is full of memories but above all reflections and a way to find her son again in its pages.
Love Soars the Skies is a sincere testimony narrated by a mother who, after the death of her son decides to open her heart and share her grieving experience as part of her healing process. It is not a self-help or moralistic book. On the contrary, what Linda seeks is to show that you can be hurt, sad, confused, or angry and still continue.
In a society in which we tend to repress our sadness, because, apparently, we all must seek happiness, this is a book full of DIGNITY.
