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    Now You See the Sky
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    Now You See the Sky
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    Now You See the Sky
    Ebook276 pages4 hours

    Now You See the Sky

    By Catharine H. Murray

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    "Murray's lucid meditations and living-in-the-moment attitude--e.g., providing simple pleasures like a favorite food to a sick child--serve as useful reminders to all of us that life is precious and fleeting and must be enjoyed to the fullest. It's a simple message but an important one. As much a eulogy to Chan as a testament to the joy of life, the book is a heartwarming tale of dealing with life-altering loss...A tender, love-filled story of how one woman dealt with the loss of a young child."
    --Kirkus Reviews

    "A compassionate journey in grief and recovery...The memoir is the transcendence from the grief that soon finds this joyful young family."
    --207

    "An extraordinary memoir. Forthright, honest and haunting...Murray's memoir is wise and enlightened."
    --Portland Press Herald

    "Catharine H. Murray's middle son, Chan, was diagnosed with a rare and complicated form of leukemia at the heartbreaking age of five. After Western medicine did all it could do, Catharine, her husband, and her three boys moved to a remote cabin in Thailand where Chan spent his final months. Today we're talking about her book Now You See the Sky, a beautiful memoir that recounts the devastating reality of the loss of her child...and how death asked her to 'nail her feet to the floor' to stay present throughout."
    --Coming Back with Shelby Forsythia (podcast)

    "Now You See the Sky is so real, so tender and so painful that its impact will be felt long after the last page...It must have been very difficult for Murray to tell this story, so personal yet so necessary, but she writes with such honesty and clarity, sure to evoke strong reader reactions."
    --Kennebec Journal

    "A gorgeously written memoir that burrows deep into the heart."
    --Brevity Magazine

    "Now You See the Sky is singular--as wise, beautiful, and elegiac as it is specific and in-the-moment. It's a rare memoir in that it gives the impression that time can be stopped. There are images in here, gestures of love, and its hard conversations, that a reader will remember forever."
    --Rick Bass, author of For a Little While

    "Powerful! More than an intimate and heartbreaking story of parenting a child with leukemia, Now You See the Sky is a lesson in accepting the raw uncertainties of life. Murray gives the reader the gift of her hard-won fortitude and compassion to carry as our own."
    --Melissa Coleman, author of This Life Is in Your Hands

    "Now You See the Sky might be set in Thailand but even after only a few pages this gorgeous debut memoir is located firmly in the reader's heart. I thank and applaud Catharine H. Murray for the openness, honesty, and beauty with which she tells this ungilded story of a mother's love for a dying child. An essential recommendation for those living with loss."
    --Suzanne Strempek Shea, author of This Is Paradise

    Now You See the Sky is a memoir about love, motherhood, and loss. When Catharine H. Murray travels to a small town on the banks of the Mekong River to work at a refugee camp, she falls in love and marries a local man with whom she has three sons. When their middle son is diagnosed with cancer at age five, their pursuit of a cure takes them from Thailand to Seattle, before they eventually return to Thailand, settling on a remote mountaintop. Full of honesty and grace, Now You See the Sky--the debut selection in Ann Hood's new Gracie Belle imprint--allows the reader to witness the fathomless loss of a beloved child and learn how tragedy can transform us, expand our vision, and make us more fully alive.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGracie Belle
    Release dateNov 6, 2018
    ISBN9781617756719
    Author

    Catharine H. Murray

    Catharine H. Murray lives with her two sons in Portland, Maine, where she teaches English to refugees. She has led workshops on grief writing and has read at Harvard University, Maine Medical Center, Maine State Prison, University of New England, and the Hayes Library in Bangkok. Her previous books include Halloween: Portraits of Fantasy and Fear and Mothering Through, a book of poems.

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    Reviews for Now You See the Sky

    4.5/5

    25 ratings12 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This is the story of a child's fight with leukemia, his death and the family's grief. It's a heartbreaking story, as stories that end with the death of a child are.What makes it different from other such memoirs is that the family chose to return to rural Thailand for the final stages of their son's illness.Author Catherine Murray, fresh out of college, headed to Thailand to work for two years in a refugee camp. She fell in love with the country, its landscapes and culture, and eventually with her soon-to-be husband, whom she met literally by the side of the road. Together they started a family as well as a tourist business.They tried living in Seattle with their children but missed the Thai culture and supportive extended family bonds. When their five year old son, Chan, was diagnosed with leukemia, they again returned to Seattle to seek state of the art treatment.But it failed.And so they returned to Thailand where their extended family met them with open hearts and arms and unlimited support.They were able to focus on their son in a beautifully peaceful rural environment, surrounded by the Buddhist culture including the awareness/mindfulness of each moment. Although healthcare was very limited, they had been told that only palliative care was possible, they decided it would be best for Chan to die among the people who loved him rather than in the hospital the little boy hated.And yet, there are parts of this book that disturbed me deeply. This six year old boy spent a lot of time crying and in misery, which the mother believed was the boy working things out and removing toxins from his psyche. He would beg for morphine and she would withhold it. I won't judge this mother – I haven't walked in her shoes. Part of her believed that he might yet be cured. But I think I would have made different choices.Well written and a look at a part of a culture that you don't usually see – this Thai/American family's experience with the Thai management of illness, Buddhist funerals, and grief.
    • 3/5
      An endearing story that gives us insight into Taiwanese culture from the viewpoint of an American woman who goes to Thailand, falls in love and makes a life there. I particularly liked the description of the rituals surrounding the birth of a child, and the gentle way in which the new mother is allowed to rest and regain her strength.When incurable illness strikes a child, we see the agonizing choices that the parents have to make, the pain they suffer as their child suffers, the swings between hope and despair, the challenges around the illness for the siblings, and finally the loss of the child's life. Though it all there is uncertainly, and doubt, and love.This book will be a comfort to families who must face similar illness and loss, and offers a way of understanding to others who may know of such families, or who just want to have a window into this world.
    • 5/5
      The author graduates from college in the United States and is ready for an adventure. She travels to Thailand where she has agreed to work at a refugee camp for two years. She had no plans after that, but life has a way of getting in the way of plans anyway. Instead of returning to the U.S. she falls in love and marries a local man, opting to remain in this rural land and raising a family. However, when her second son is diagnosed with cancer, she and her family return to the U.S. in an attempt to save him. When that is not possible, they return to Thailand, where they hope the clean air, water and simple food will save him. It is a heartbreaking loss, one I found myself sharing as I sat on my couch with tears streaming down my face. This book is a wonderful look at what life is like in another country where maybe they do more right than we do.
    • 4/5
      This memoir is a slice of life. It follows the author through her early career immediately after college. We see her young, naive, and abroad in Thailand teaching in a rural town. She meets a local man and begins what she believes will be a summer fling. Meanwhile, her intended time to stay passes and she keeps coming up with reasons to remain. Finally, she admits that she is in love and they are married.They have a simple life in the countryside and they begin to start a family. They briefly flirt with returning to America but after an aborted attempt they return to Thailand. Matters seem so perfectly at peace, when the author's middle son is diagnosed with Leukemia. This is a heartfelt account of the illness and grieving process. She faces the almost certain outcome of her son's death but still the hope remains. She learns to fight everyday even though intellectually there appears to be no possible chance. A thoughtful, sad, and beautiful book.
    • 5/5
      I received this book through Library Thing for my honest review. I found this memoir to be beautifully written, and challenging for me to read. I loved the author's telling of her life in Thailand, but the challenging part was reading about her child's cancer , his death, and her grieving process. I've been through that several times, though not with a child.
    • 3/5
      A memoir of a son's death in Thailand by his mother, who was from Maine. Parts of it were very good. The narrative in the middle of his illness, the family dynamics and the ending of his life you could relate to. But I found the beginning too bogged down with detail and with his death I found the description disturbing as she described in detail the funeral process which is different than our own in the US. I envied the relationship of the family. If it was my child I think I would have opted for the hospice, the morphine, early on. Hard to say until you are in the situation. I don't know who the target audience would be for this book, for whom I would buy it.
    • 5/5
      Catharine H. Murray wanted a completely change her life, she wanted to be independent and live on her own.She volunteered to work in a refugee camp in Thailand for two years. She met and after dating married Dtaw. They started a family and their own tour company. But she missed her own culture so they moved to Seattle and struggled to have enough money to live on.Her middle son, Chan, who was only four years old started to have symptoms that seemed unrelated so they took him to a doctor. But when they got the final diagnosis. the whole family began a terrible journey of watching Chan go from a very athletic little boy to one struggling for his life. This is a universal story of of parents and siblings caring and loving. Chan gives insights into his situation. You will feel the compassion of the whole community from his immediate family to the Buddist monks in the village to his aunts and his grandparents.I urge you to read it.
    • 5/5
      This book was very well written. The description of living in Thailand was done so well that you felt like you were there. It was a heartbreaking story but there was joy in it also.
    • 5/5
      You can't enjoy a book about a child's death, but the author had the ability to pull the reader into the immediacy of the situation to the point that when you stop reading and put the book down for a while, you feel as if you're leaving the child suffering and are compelled to get back to the book as soon as possible. And although it is heartbreaking, there is also a big sense of relief when you know that the little boy is not in pain anymore.
    • 5/5
      I received an ARC of this book through Librarything in exchange for an honest review.I wasn't expecting to "enjoy" this book as it focuses on a very sad topic- that of a young child stricken with cancer. The writing was beautiful though, and I did find myself enjoying reading it. Murray's talent as a writer comes through in her descriptions of feelings, people, and particularly of nature. Much of the story takes places in Thailand. The slower pace of life, the community feel, the breezes blowing, the family bed, the teas and food, the friends and family who gather together to build things, cook things, play games, etc.. it was all so captivating, it made me want to travel there to see for myself! Interestingly, at some points in the book, I felt like the writer was nonAmerican. I can't determine exactly why I had that sense, perhaps it was just because Murray lived there for so long that she began to sound like a native.A beautiful, though heartbreaking story. Murray's first book gets 5 stars.
    • 5/5
      A poignant look at life; love, marriage, family and the death of a beloved child. The beauty of Thailand, its peoples and customs was always up front in this fascinating book. It will tear your heart out and make you weep and might even, if you're suffering from grief, help to heal you.
    • 5/5
      Sad but wonderful book of this mom and her family’s struggle and pain of their young child’s death. Along side sharing the author tells about living in Thailand and how that culture looks at life and death.