Bobby Pierce Forest Gilbert was a 17-year-old boy who committed suicide on 20th April 2015. After being found in his ex-girlfriends yard, he was rushed to the hospital. He was then declared brain-dead and because he was an organ donor, the doctors discussed options with his parents. On the 22nd, he was taken into surgery where his organs could be harvested. Unbelievably, Pierce was able to save 5 lives. He left behind a host of family and friends, as well as a letter explaining why he did it. Our Year of First Without You: A journey through suicide and organ donation takes us through the events leading up to and after his death.
This was a difficult book for me to review. I was really looking forward to hearing the author's journey through this traumatic event. I was interested to see how she coped with life after a child’s death. But I feel like I didn’t get a very personal account. The story read more like a written statement than an insightful and reflective interpretation of what happened. Bobbi Gilbert takes you through the series of events paragraph by paragraph, day by day, citing exactly what transpired. This way of writing removed me from the story and I never felt connected to the family the way I would have hoped.
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Mrs. Gilbert has a clear dislike of Sarah, Pierce’s on-again, off-again girlfriend. I would go as far as to say that she blames his suicide mostly on Sarah. There are places that she said that it was the depression that killed him, but her treatment of Sarah before and after his death is utterly hostile. The suicide is harrowing to say the least, and everyone who knew him felt the disturbance of his death. For me, there should be catharsis in forgiveness, and there was none here. Most of the book was a pure diatribe against Sarah. I feel like these journalistic rants against her were