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Book Review

By Ricky Rapoport Friesem
Book Review Editor
Poetica Magazine
www.poeticamagazine.com


Title: Snapshots In Memory of Ben by Alan D. Busch, Water Forest Press, Stormville, New York$12.95

“The only antidote to the pain of our loss lies in the tenacity with which we remember our children. It is incumbent upon us that we refuse to allow their memories to die.”… Snapshots

Ben (Benjamin) Busch was fatally struck by a truck at the age of 22. This slim volume, composed of brief, intimate glimpses into Ben’s life and the lives of those who loved him, is a father’s sensitive and touching effort to come to terms with this tragic loss.

Alan Busch, an independent writer living in Skokie, Illinois, has written a reflective, sometimes agonizingly candid journal that surmounts its exceedingly personal content to convey universal truths. The text reflects his skill with words, his ear for dialogue, his attention to detail, but above all his profound orthodox faith and his unflinching honesty in confronting the untimely death of his first-born son.

Busch disagrees with the common aphorism that ‘Time heals all wounds’. “Parental bereavement does not heal with the passage of time. It really is best this way,” he writes, and proceeds in Snapshots to confront the pain and etch an indelible portrait of Ben. In so doing he creates an intensely moving image of a father’s love for his son and of the conscious efforts he makes to create and preserve family memories.

“The most effective, lingering and ‘memory-making’ parenting is measured in brief but wondrous moments that, unless recorded, would otherwise be lost as stories unavailable to both present and future generations of parents looking to transform the ‘every day’ into the ‘everlasting,” he writes.

In recording his ‘wondrous moments’ with Ben, Alan Busch has created a memorial that touches anyone who has loved and been bereaved.