Well I just put my daughter down to sleep and tried unsuccessfully to read Love You Forever aloud without weeping into her pajamas. I feel like if I had read this book before I had a child, it would not have had the same effect on me. I also believe that had I read this book before I had a child, there would be other questions people should be asking. Apparently this was a popular book when I was a child and was just as emotional then for my parents as it is for me today.
The book is certainly repetitive, but damnit, I felt every word of it. For those that have not read this and have not had an emotional awakening, on the surface, the book is simple. A mother taking care of her child from birth throughout his life, until the mother can’t take care of herself anymore. That is where the son takes over and sings the same GOD DAMN song his mother sang to him as he puts her to sleep.
As I read, I kept thinking there is no way that I could sneak in and hold my adolescent/teenage (let alone, adult) daughter while she slept without waking her, but I guess I am missing the point of the book. If the point of the book is to make a father wilt right before his daughter’s eyes, well, CONGRATULATIONS! It did not help that the man grows up, ends up holding his dying mother while saying the same damn “love you forever” words that she said to him as he was growing up. I can’t even type these sentences without feeling chills or having my eyes well up… or using flippant curse words to help me get back to center. My chi.
My daughter, I hope, is too young to understand the words that I am saying, mainly because they aren’t so much words as they are sobs. When she sees the amount of fluid coming out of my face, maybe she will interpret this as me trying to make her feel better about her persistent drooling problem. Either way, Robert Munsch, bravo! Congratulations. Are you happy? You did it. You made a grown man cry.