How Much Big Is the Sky: A Memoir of a Mother's Love and Unfathomable Loss

by Sherry Chapman

Overview

How Much Big Is the Sky is a mother's searingly melodic and eloquent love song to her teenage son, Ryan, following his sudden death resulting from a car crash. Sherry Chapman captures the intimacy and immediacy of her experience with a rare combination of profound tenderness, literary skill, and raw candor. This stunning account of love and loss is structured in five parts resembling the various stages of grief. From the sudden blow of an early morning phone call to a mother's frantic advocacy to her final reflections on what remains, this book is unforgettable.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781951307011
Publisher:	Pedigree Publishing
Publication date:	10/22/2019
Pages:	310
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.81(d)

Table of Contents

Part I. Shock and Denial

Part II. Yearning and Isolation

Part III. Purpose and Frenzy

Part IV. Reflection

Part V. Resignation

Editorial Reviews

2020-03-03
In this debut memoir, Chapman discusses her grief and subsequent activism after losing her teenage son in a car accident.

One day in 2002, the author writes, she woke before dawn to a phone call that no parent wants to receive. Her only son, Ryan, she learned, had been seriously injured in an automobile crash. After she and her husband, Michael, rushed to the hospital, they learned that the teenager had died. What follows is Chapman’s detailed account of coping with what she describes as the “unfathomable loss” of her son. She tells of the aftermath of the sudden tragedy, from making funeral arrangements to choosing a burial plot to reading sympathy cards. Throughout, Chapman’s prose offers vivid detail and self-reflection: “Grief has descended on our family like a thick blanket we can’t crawl out from under.” At one point, soon after the accident, she recalls how her familiar role as a parent shifted as she was “Terrified to see my vibrant boy so badly damaged that I can’t fix it. I’ve always fixed things for my children. Kissed their scrapes and stood them back on their feet again.” Overall, Chapman’s story is instructive and clarifying about what it’s like to lose a child, highlighting painful minutiae of everyday tasks, as well as the author’s recurring nightmares. She later joined a support group and learned that many other parents, like herself, had lost children to automobile-related accidents. Her life took another turn when she and others formed an organization called “!MPACT” (“Mourning Parents Act”), an advocacy group that was dedicated to raising awareness regarding safe teenage driving. She writes that her life took on new meaning as she became an activist to change state and federal laws regarding such things as driver-training hours, in order to make driving safer for the inexperienced.

A brave recollection of a shattering loss.

Kirkus Reviews

"How Much Big Is the Sky spares no difficult details as it describes the darkest and most unimaginable corners of a parent confronting tragedy. Yet the book’s jagged chronology mirrors the experience and leaves on the reader the indelible impression that this mother has faced reality with enormous courage, described it with disarming clarity, and provided us with clear-eyed perspectives and rays of hope . . . Thank you, Sherry, for endeavoring to write this book and delivering such compelling honesty."

–Tim Hollister, author, His Father Still; co-author, Not So Fast: Parenting Your Teen Through the Dangers of Driving

From the Publisher