Daniel P. Shapiro is the author of the memoir, The Thin Ledge.
What People Are Saying
“Heartfelt and profound; remarkably insightful. A keenly-observed reminder that some of humanity’s most compelling stories are wrung from unimaginable hardship and loss.”
— Paul L. Sandberg, Producer, the “Jason Bourne” trilogy
“What would you do if the person you love became someone else? In his painfully honest, elegantly written memoir, Daniel Shapiro takes us on a journey where commitment clashes with longing, where responsibility duels self-preservation. There is no easy answer, but in the hands of this capable guide, the reader is moved, challenged, and in the end enlightened.”
— Steve Fiffer, Guggenheim Fellow and author of “Three Quarters, Two Dimes, and a Nickel: A Memoir of Becoming Whole”
“This is a gorgeous memoir about the unthinkable. Don’t be afraid of this book. Dive in for the beauty of its honesty.”
— S.L. Wisenberg, winner of the Pushcart Prize, author of “The Adventures of Cancer Bitch”
From The Thin Ledge
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“Am I okay?”, she asked.
The doctor turned around to face Susan and me. All of the tension in that room was held in his tightly pursed lips before he spoke.
“No, you are not okay.”
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I was at a party recently and wound up in a conversation with a psychiatrist, talking about traumatic brain injury. I explained that in Susan’s brain scans very large sections of brain were simply missing, that tissue having died and then dissolved….The doctor explained that people with that sort of brain injury, in her experience, lived moment to moment and did not see a world beyond themselves. She said that our children had lost their mother. That person no longer existed post–trauma and would never exist again.
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She was engaged in the unpleasant journey of discovering exactly how much less of her there was than there had been before. Was she still charming, lovable, funny? She didn’t really know, or maybe she knew enough to know that she was not what she had been and that was so scary that she didn’t want to reveal that to me or to anyone else…but certainly not to me.