SHAWN

PHOTO BY RANDY BACON

SHAWN

“Reading is Like Breathing”

My daughter Lawren has always loved books. We went to Barnes & Noble every Saturday after the Supreme Bakery from when she was about two until she went to college. Chocolate covered pretzel for her and apple fritter for me in case you were wondering. One Saturday I bought my wife Caron a book on the Oprah Book Club list called Tuesdays With Morrie. She loved it. “You have to read this book.” “No thanks. It’s about love and relationships. You go right ahead,” I said. As a hard charging criminal defense lawyer, I was into books on DNA evidence and topics like “How To Cross Examine Anyone & Everyone.”

Reading is like breathing. We take words in from the page and sometimes when they touch our soul we exhale those blessings onto others. I hope I do that. More routine, but life giving, reading is like oxygen for me because I need it. Every night reading calms, inspires, entertains, and sometimes moves me. Once in a while it moves me beyond the page to action as if those words are spoken directly to me and the writer is a mere conduit. Lightning strikes like that when the perfect book intersects with a time in my life when no other explanation will suffice. Tuesdays With Morrie. embodied that for me over 20 years ago. My daughter, Lawren, read it to me and the words made their dwelling in me. Those words both pierced and mended my broken heart at the same time. Every few pages of Lawren’s narration I excused myself to the bathroom to cry in private lest I allow my daughter the full view of my vulnerability. I know better now, and the tears roll when they need to fall.

The true story is about Morrie Schwartz, a retired professor who’s slowly dying of ALS disease, and the student from years past who reconnected with him. Each week Morrie imparts deep yet understandable wisdom during their visits on - you guessed it - Tuesdays. God spoke to me from the pages of that book and placed her hand on my own broken heart from 25 years earlier. My father died of cancer when I was 14 years old and the pain of those days remained inside me all of those years. Grief does not know the calendar. So moved by Morrie I co-founded a regional grief center with Dr. Karen Scott. We’re celebrating our 22nd year helping children and families grieve the death of a loved one at Lost & Found.

Looking back, I can trace a direct line from that book to the grief center, leaving law for chocolate, and writing a book together with Lawren. And the reading continues with Lawren’s daughter, my granddaughter, Goldie Bell.