Jayson Greene

Years ago, I must have been 8 or 9 years old, a book made the rounds of our family. The title was “Angel Unaware.” It was by Dale Evans and Roy Rogers, and it was about their daughter Robin who had been born in 1950 with Downs Syndrome and a heart ailment. She died shortly before her second birthday. That book moved me, young as I was. I think it was one of the first times I had confronted the idea of death. Jayson Greene’s book “Once More We Saw Stars” reminded me of that Roy Rogers and Dale Evans book about their own daughter they lost at about the same age as Jayson and his wife lost their daughter Greta. Jayson’s book is a chronicle of pain and grief and how two parents survive that pain and grief. The lengths to which they go to deal with their loss show the reader just how deeply rooted in their being it was. A trip to a New Age retreat camp, while almost comical in its strange but very new ageish rituals, showed just how desperate and willing Jayson and his wife were to find a way to live with the loss of their daughter. I’m not sure it’s accurate to say they eventually learned to “live with” the grief. They learned to understand it and to incorporate it into their lives with their new son Harrison. And they were determined to make sure that Harrison knew his sister, even though he would never meet her. This book was touching in a very special way because it wasn’t an attempt to gain sympathy from the reader so much as it was Jayson’s attempt to show the reader what two parents can do to find a way when reason, logic, and grief tell them there is no way.… (mehr)