How to Survive the Death of a Child: A Father’s Story of Healing Light by Ken Matthies
This is the story of a father’s love for a child lost and found – and then lost again. It’s the story of his journey into that loss and his decision to come back, finding both his precious child and himself once more in the process.
Carcross, YT (PRWEB) November 21, 2011
‘How to Survive the Death of a Child: A Father’s Story of Healing Light’ provides readers with an unusual insight into the experience of personal grieving, and a guide to understanding the steps of the healing process to find their recovery from it. Author Ken Matthies accomplishes this by giving readers a detailed personal account of his own deeply painful and ultimately healing experiences encountered following the sudden death of his daughter, a pilot who perished in the mechanical failure crash of the helicopter she was co-piloting while flying heli-logging operations in central British Columbia, Canada in August of 2002.
Informed at 9:22 p.m. on August 8, 2002 while away on a business trip of his daughter’s sudden death in a helicopter crash earlier that morning, ‘How to Survive the Death of a Child’ is Ken Matthies’ first-hand account. Written with an insider’s deep knowledge of such events rarely described in print, it is a graphically told true story of the emotionally crippling grief experience revolving around the loss of his child. It is also a highly revealing chronicle of the four year journey traveled through that loss describing how he emerged from it whole and healed of its painful effects.
The author’s use of compelling narrative describes deeply shadowed and repressed valleys of denial, anger, depression and confusion encountered along the route of death’s close passage through his life caused by the death of his child. Drawing upon what he describes as “the richly healing light of love and memories seared into his soul with the tenderest of touches from a loving daughter’s heart,” Ken Matthies also tells how he discovered the profoundly healing truths that there is hope, there is consolation, and there is life again after a child’s death.
“This story of a father’s devastating loss and his difficult journey of healing is raw, powerful and eloquent,” stated Anthony Carter, the author’s counselor at Hospice Yukon Society. “These words have been pulled molten from the furnace of a father’s broken heart, and with hammer and sparks have been fiercely forged into a most beautiful gift for us all – the gift of Hope”.
“This is the story of a father’s love for a child lost and found – and then lost again,” stated Cathy Routledge, Executive Director of Hospice Yukon Society. “It’s the story of his journey into that loss and his decision to come back, finding both his precious child and himself once more in the process – allowing us to witness his healing, and to perhaps heal a little along with him.”
Readers interested in learning more about ‘How to Survive the Death of a Child: A Father’s Story of Healing Light’ can visit http://www.KenMatthies.com to preview a chapter of the book. Those wishing to speak to Ken Matthies should contact him at 867-821-4004 for more information on the topic of this news release.
For over 40 years of his life Ken Matthies has been a writer and chronicler of life expressed in poetic form, following the family tradition laid down by his grandfather before him.
Faced with the dramatically life altering experience of his helicopter pilot daughter’s sudden death in 2002 he has grown to also become a literary author of true events based on his own life.
In addition to his first book ‘How to Survive the Death of a Child: A Father’s Story of Healing Light,’ Ken Matthies is also the author of numerous grief healing articles, a lifetime’s accumulation of poetry and more recently written characterized true life stories – all of which are due for publication in 2012. His first work of fiction is currently a work in progress. He lives in the northern solitude and grandeur of a tiny southern Yukon village, an area which he says is a good place to tell his stories from.
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