Calista's Reviews > Last Things: A Graphic Memoir of Loss and Love

Heartbreaking! This story is a difficult and sad story that will break your heart.

Marissa Moss is writing a Memoir about her family dealing with the time her husband came down with Bulbar ALS or a worse kind of Lou Gerrigs Disease. This is a horrible disease to have. There is no dignity in this at all.

Reading this gives me the overwhelming sense of how much Marissa loved her husband because she had to go through so much hell. I can't believe the things she had to do. It was monumental what she endured.

Her husband pulled away from her and the family and went internal in a place of denial and anger, and who can blame him, but he didn't do himself any favors. Every decision he made, just about was a bad one. The saddest part to me what how he left his children in the cold. He didn't try to keep the kids in his life and his children seemed to suffer for it as their mom did her best. He made Marissa choose between him and the boys in the end and she had to choose life, and her boys. I can't imagine how agonizing that would be. Marissa made some of the toughest choices a person could have to make in life.

So much happens and there are so many disturbing developments as the disease ate away at Harvey. Harvey couldn't swallow well and he could barely choke his food down. That would be awful to listen to daily. He would also have salvia build-up in his lungs and had to suction out the fluid so he could breath. It was a 24 hour job. The suctioning had to take place about every 15 minutes. This whole thing is horrible. It should not be allowed to exist and yet it does and what a family bomb it is. It just blows them up.

Harvey choose to finish a book he was working on for 16 years and he didn't finish it, but Marissa took 4 years and she finished it for him after he died. It was a very beautiful part of the book that really tied it up nicely or as nicely as this nightmare could be tied up. She also published this book to sort out her feelings and memories of this time of no sleep and constant pressure, a distant husband who left her and would hardly talk to her and her children needed so much during this time.

I tell you, this powerful story is heartbreaking and powerful. It is a beautiful little book in its own way. About the worst case scenario in life.