Maisel’s book, “I Keep Trying to Catch His Eye: A Memoir of Loss, Grief and Love,” is the story of a father’s searing honesty about how to deal with the suicide of a son.

In February 2015, a phone call from the Sheriff’s Office in Monroe County, NY, home of the Rochester Institute of Technology, where his son, Max, was a 21-year-old, was the first step in being introduced to “The Club No one wants to join, ”as Maisel describes it. Max’s car was found parked on the shore of Lake Ontario and the young man was missing.

Unbeknownst to his parents, Max had lost himself in the darkness of depression and mental illness. Still a little lonely character, he had walked on the ice of Lake Ontario until she could no longer hold him back. It would take two months before a fisherman fell on his body.

And it wasn’t just the father, of course, leveled by the shock of the event, it was a family: Meg Murray, Max’s mother and Maisel’s wife, and Max’s sisters Sarah and Elizabeth. , and extensions on both sides.

Once the father reached a state of equilibrium – it took almost six years – in January 2020, Maisel began writing what in my assessment is “The Book No One Wants to Write”.

Parts of the tale are hard to read: the torment – and torrent – of regret, anger, guilt, and remorse for missed signs that, in retrospect, were so painfully clear. And at the end of the day – at the end of each day – the hottest of all, a lost son.

But it’s also a story of deep love and resilience – a family’s safety harness – and survival. The book is dedicated to the daughters Sarah and Elizabeth. On the dedication page, the father describes them as “lighthouses on my shore”.

“Writing was not difficult,” Maisel said the other day as we sat in his garden on a warm fall afternoon, “because I can write. Living across it was the hill.

Maisel’s baritone voice is rich in traces of his native Alabama.

The punches in this book are heavy. Any reader will feel them. Fathers, I think, will feel them even more. What father wouldn’t kill for the chance to do something with a child, or protect one?

The Max that emerges from the pages is a shy boy who has always struggled to connect with others. He was never diagnosed as being anywhere on the autism spectrum. He did well enough to graduate from Fairfield Warde High School in Fairfield and pursue his interest in photography at RIT.

How could anyone know that Max was spiraling so dangerously?

For example, Max was home for the holidays in 2014, Maisel recalls, and the young man Max was his usual loner. For example, Maisel said, “At one point Meg and I and the girls were standing in the kitchen and Max was in the den. Meg said ‘Max, why don’t you come here and talk to us?’ And he said ‘No, I’m fine.’ “

Maisel continued, “The wrong part was that Max was still emotionally young. He was almost 21 and a junior in college, and he was finally doing the independence thing, like most teenagers are. That’s how I took it and that’s how Meg took it, ”he said.

One of the long pauses that occurred during this interview ensued.

“It was a whiff,” Maisel said.

After Max’s death, the Maisels continued to search for clues. On Max’s laptop, for example, Maisel found this reflection of Max: “I wish I could see in myself what my friends are doing. I wish I could see my own worth. But I can not. And I’m so drowned in negativity and cynicism that I doubt I will ever do it.

“Reading that,” Maisel wrote, “may have been my lowest point. “

How was the title born? Maisel moved his 6-foot-3 frame in his chair and pulled his cell phone out of a pocket. “The phrase came from looking at this one day,” he said, showing me the phone’s wallpaper. This is a photo taken during his daughter Sarah’s graduation ceremony at Stanford – Maisel’s alma mater – in 2014. The graduate is flanked by Max to his right and his sister Elizabeth to his left.

The sisters smile and engage with the goal. Max, however, with his left arm draped over the new graduate’s shoulder, looks up and to the right. If only he looked good that way.

Maisel does not present himself as an expert in mental health in any way. “I’m an expert on one case,” he said and stopped again. “It didn’t go very well,” he says.

“He really wanted to connect with people,” Maisel said, “but he just wasn’t very well equipped to do it. He wore armor, in part because he didn’t process emotions like other people. do it. Pause. “He was a lovely guy.”

The book will be released on October 26 and Maisel will undertake a promotional tour, some virtual stops, some in person, including an October 25 appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America”.

Of the book, he said, “This is what I can do. And the best way I can treat it. And maybe it will help someone.

On the way out, Maisel showed me in their kitchen what I initially thought was a painting, an idyllic lake scene. The water lilies in the foreground gave the image a slight impression of Monet in Giverny.

“Is it a painting? I asked. “No,” he replied. ” It’s a photo. It’s Charleston Lake in Ontario, about 20 minutes north of the border.

– Beautiful, I say. Another pause. “Max took this photo,” he said.

Her son’s thoughts evoke – and will forever be – a swarm of emotions in Maisel. Pride is among them.

Michael J. Daly is retired editor of the Connecticut Post Opinion page. Email: [email protected]