the_grimm_reader 's review for:

Warrior's Creed: A Life of Preparing for and Facing the Impossible by Don Rearden, Roger Sparks

5.0

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After caring for my Momma during her rapid decline from cancer, I find myself isolated in the memories of her pain, suffering, and loss. Nothing prepares one to draw close to the physical, mental, and emotional suffering of a loved one bear the end. The sounds, sights, textures, smells, and actions are not of the sort one experiences in their daily life—I was not trained for this. Still, it was my duty—a duty of love for my mother—that gave me strength during those months and days. “I will not abandon you,” became my mantra and promise. I have found almost no solace since her passing, but in the memoirs and stories from military veterans I found a perspective and language—a raw honesty—that has brought me some comfort, and this book by Roger Sparks lives in that space. The last four chapters were intense, not just in Roger’s raw telling of his experiences as a pararescue jumper in Afghanistan, but rather the power these recollections had to cut deep into the space of my pain, loss, suffering, grief, and memory. I am no soldier or veteran, but Roger has the ability to bring you with him into the desperate, horrible spaces he found himself in, as much as anyone can. Post traumatic stress is real and occurs in a myriad of ways. Combat seems to be the most condensed cause for it—I am grateful to Roger and others like him for sharing the brutal truth of these spaces and their realistic path toward entering the “vacant neon sign” (as Roger put it) of the civilized world. Am I better for having read this? Perhaps, if I’m willing to adopt some form of the Warriors Creed to face each day. At the end of this book I felt relief, which might seem odd to the insulated individual considering the often gruesome experiences retold in Roger’s book, but the relief is real nonetheless. I am very glad I found and read this book, and I am grateful for the heroes—those just like Roger Sparks—that run toward suffering and offer all they have to those in need, seeming to say, “You are not alone—I will not abandon you.”