While readying to write about Professor Cromer Learns to Read, I searched for a quote or statistic that would put in perspective the overwhelming job families have caring for brain-injured loved ones, words that said how much we are failing brain injured soldiers returning from war, athletes cast aside after they’ve suffered irreparable damage to their brain, those who’ve fallen, those who’ve been in car accidents—all our mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, friends, partners, and children who struggle to make it back and most of whom will never be the same.
As Cromer says about many things, “all the above is true”, but instead, I’ll offer the words Janet Cromer said to her brain-injured husband each night:
“Alan, the joy of my life is waking up with you each morning. The joy of my life is going to sleep with you each night.”
Before his acquired brain injury, anoxic brain damage (and later dementia and Parkinson’s disease) engendered by his massive heart attack and cardiac arrest, Alan Cromer was a prolific author and physics professor at Northeastern University. Like so many of us, reading was the center of his life.
In Professor Cromer Learns to Read, author Jane Cromer takes us on an unprecedented love story. The author struggles through the caretaking of her brain injured husband—years when he is often scary and sometimes unmanageable, and yet this is a love story so tender that one finds many moments to envy their relationship.
Janet and Alan Cromer traveled from Boston to Chicago for a family reunion. A few days later, on the return flight, Alan’s heart and the Cromer’s life stopped. Both were resuscitated. Neither remained recognizable.
Most books of recovery end when the healing begins—leaving the reader uplifted and with the ability to imagine a trajectory of continuing good change. Janet Cromer brings us through the entire cycle of her husband’s tortuous road, first to some semblance of recovery—but never of a return to his former life—and then lets us into their lives and their marriage as medically and emotionally things become worse, leading towards Alan’s death seven years after his heart attack.
This book grabbed me by my heart and held tight until the final page. Cromer, both a poetic and a plainspoken writer, offers shining tough honesty. She shares her fear of losing this man for whom she has a ‘ferocious love.’ She also shares the loneliness, grief and exhaustion of living with this new Alan, who in the grasp of brain injury could become rage-filled and frightening. Calling it “all the above is true” the author paints a picture of her life ricocheting from hope to tenderness to her own dark rage.
Janet Cromer brings the ultimate gift to the reader: opening a door to her furious experience with authenticity, openness, and a page-turning craft. She captures the medical information gracefully and clearly, never turning away from the difficult parts. She opens the door to her marriage and lets us in every room. Never do Alan or Janet Cromer get saint treatment (though at times I thought they should.)
Professor Cromer Learns To Read is a memoir, a story of medical courage, but at its’ core it is a love story.
I read this book because it was written by one of my closest friend’s dear friend. When Diane promised it was a magnificent read I tried to believe her, but I worried. I didn’t open it with great hope. I was prejudiced by most of my experiences with self-published work (which lacked proper editing and suffered from the lack of an objective eye pulling out the weaker parts.)
Professor Cromer Learns To Read so surpassed my expectations (reflecting the authors’ dedicated participation in writer’s groups in Provincetown, Cambridge, and Boston) that I wrote the author asking why she’d not taken the traditional publishing route. In her answer she wrote:
“Timing was my main consideration. Alan had been dead for a few years already and I wanted the story to be timely. Brain injury (BI) is in the news constantly due to the estimated 300,000 returning vets with some degree of BI, and I want to be of some assistance to their families. Last summer as I raced to finish the book, I was in a whirlwind of preparing my 12 room JP house to be sold after living there 25 years, undergoing unexpected spinal fusion surgery with a long recovery, and planning my wedding. I remarried last August and moved to Bethesda, MD. My husband has been terrific in this bizarre situation: his new wife is spending their first year together promoting a book about her first husband!
So, with all that going on, I didn’t want to spend another year sending out book proposals, then another year for the book to be published if I was really lucky. My plan was to publish first with Author House, then send out proposals to traditional publishers. I’m still interested in that route.”
Lucky is the agent and publisher who adopts this book. Janet Cromer has already received an award for “Excellence in Medical Communication” and the “Neil Duane Award of Distinction” from the American Medical Writers Association New England Chapter.
Janet Cromer’s book can be purchased at Amazon and through janetcromer.com.
I loved this book. Buy it now, and then later you can say you were one of those smart early readers.
