Life After Death

Surviving Suicide

Richard Brockman

• Publisher: Arcade
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9781680998061
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Medicine Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

An intertwined tale of a boy’s world shattered by suicide and a man’s story rewritten by neuroscience.

When Richard Brockman found his mother’s body, the simple narrative of his childhood ended. Life After Death tells the story of a boy who died and of a man who survived when the boy and the man are one and the same. It tells a very personal—yet tragically common—story of irredeemable loss. It tells the story of story itself. How story forms. How it grows. How it changes. How it can be broken. And finally, how sometimes it can be repaired.

Now an expert in genetics, epigenetics, and the biology of attachment, Brockman chronicles his evolution from a child overwhelmed by trauma to a man who has struggled to reclaim his past. He lays bare the core of one who is both victim and healer. By weaving together childhood despair and clinical knowledge, Brockman shows how the shattered pieces of the self—though never the same and not without scars—can sometimes be put back together again.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword: Two Stories
• Chapter 1: “What Are You Thinking?” Take One
• Chapter 2: “What Are You Thinking?” Take Two
• Chapter 3: Herbs
• Chapter 4: Two Doors
• Chapter 5: What Comes Next
• Chapter 6: DeKalb Avenue
• Chapter 7: The Big Orange
• Chapter 8: Troubled Sleep
• Chapter 9: A Knock on the Door
• Chapter 10: His Mother’s Voice
• Chapter 11: The Savoy Ballroom
• Chapter 12: Paternity
• Chapter 13: So When You Were Born
• Chapter 14: Bootstraps
• Chapter 15: Cortisol
• Chapter 16: The Epigenotype
• Chapter 17: The Great White
• Chapter 18: Bacon and Eggs—Take One
• Chapter 19: Bacon and Eggs—Take Two
• Chapter 20: The Still Face
• Chapter 21: Electric Eels
• Chapter 22: Holding Her Hand
• Chapter 23: America
• Chapter 24: Another Mother
• Chapter 25: He Had a Hat
• Chapter 26: Two Mothers—Take One
• Chapter 27: Two Mothers—Take Two
• Chapter 28: The Pneumogastric
• Chapter 29: Happy Birthday
• Chapter 30: Fire
• Chapter 31: Where Proper Story Starts
• Chapter 32: Castration Anxiety
• Chapter 33: How I Learned to Drive
• Chapter 34: Do Not Enter
• Chapter 35: Papier-mâché
• Chapter 36: Tying the Knot
• Chapter 37: Guarding
• Chapter 38: Sickness Pain
• Chapter 39: Glass Slippers
• Chapter 40: What Did You See? Take One
• Chapter 41: What Did You See? Take Two
• Chapter 42: Troubled Sleep Take Two
• Chapter 43: A Dog
• Chapter 44: The School Bus
• Chapter 45: Pennsylvania Station
• Chapter 46: Fresh Squeezed
• Chapter 47: Vows
• Chapter 48: Time Has Come
• Chapter 49: At the Corner of Norman Rockwell and Main—Take One
• Chapter 50: Road Kill
• Chapter 51: The Oddball Paradigm
• Chapter 52: Alchemy
• Chapter 53: Apples
• Chapter 54: The Program
• Chapter 55: Cinderella
• Chapter 56: At the Corner of Norman Rockwell and Main—Take Two
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Endnotes