Where The River Ends

Chris, friend/co-worker, is a big reader and a fan of Charles Martin. He's written 6 novels and the last one Where The River Ends is one she loaned me. It follows a man and his wife and the blurb describes it as: a chronicle of their love-filled, tragedy tinged journey and a bond that transcends all. If it were a movie, The Farm Boy, would immediately dismiss it as a chick flick and walk off. He misses a lot doing that... Anyway as they fight her breast cancer Doss notices that when he takes Abbie in for chemo that most of the women are there alone. Few have their husbands with them. Some men, of course, are at work or watching the kids but many are just - gone...for good. That "thru sickness and health" thing never jelled for them. It makes him mad...

"Why? Where are they?" He wants to know. Abbie answers, "Well, when you married a face, or a pair of boobs or maybe just a shapely figure - when those are gone, then...so are the men."

While he has no plans to leave Abbie, further on in the book he talks about time and perspective and the difficulty of staying the course...

Riddled with fear, sadness and stress, our imaginations run wild like they did when we were kids and the monsters camped out in the closets. What's worse, we listen like Captain Hook, haunted by the ticking of the clock. Cancer-free moments are the exception, not the norm. We have progressed from beating it, to living with it...to just living. I have become more defensive in posture, building walls to insulate us from the bad news. Because there's always more. Life and death are always on our mind. Idle thinking is no longer idle. I wanted so badly to think in future tense, to talk about summer movies, buy two tickets to the next Superbowl, plant a garden, put off something, schedule an appointment to get her teeth cleaned, plan a vacation, but then would find myself standing in the produce aisle and asking myself, Should I buy green bananas?

Ouch.

Thought provoking. Sad. But also a love story. Be prepared to cry.
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