“Can you help me die?”

This is a father and son story that weaves through an era of tumultuous social change toward a lifetime of healing. From a bicultural family life in the socialist setting of the Panama Canal Zone to a death by voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED), at times these pages read with the whimsy of childhood memory and at times with the weighty and impassioned words of facing our mortality.

Moving through vignettes of a boy at play in tropical jungles, a family’s various migrations, or a dying father’s gusto and gratitude for life, you’ll hitchhike, you’ll sing, you’ll play baseball, and you’ll grieve. Perhaps you’ll ask the ancient questions to the Great Mystery that is life and death, pondering, “Where do we go from here?”

This memoir is a classic in the genre of a family’s struggles around death and dying. After years of rebellion, a father and son are led to an embrace of mutual understanding. This story belongs to anyone seeking resolution through love and the experience of loss. ~ Jennifer Owens Dewey, author of Antarctica, Four Years at the Bottom of the World and Wildlife Rescue

Nory shows how tenaciously we hold our world together when we sing in the face of all the forces trying to tear it apart. This book offers deep connection, a much-needed antidote to despair and isolation. ~ Gene Berson, poet, Raveling Travel

 
Nory Fussell is a father and a grandfather, a musician and a massage therapist, a traveler and a homebody. He is well-studied and self-taught, outspoken and soft-spoken, comfortable at both center stage and in the back row. Born in the Republic of Panama in 1948, Nory has called Northern California’s Yuba River watershed Home for over 40 years.