A tortured soul spends a lifetime trying to make sense of a senseless world. Sometimes, our own worst enemy is only a reflection away.
In the tradition of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, The Dying of Mortimer Post is a first-person narrative chronicling the life of a young protagonist through the turbulence of a changing world after he undergoes a life-shattering event.
Mortimer Post is the quintessential product of late-60's middle America. He is a college-bound physics major from a good family, engaged to his high-school sweetheart, and is at the forefront of his version of the American dream. Then, in twelve short minutes, he faces a loss so devastating it marks the end of his living and the beginning of his dying. But as the opening statement suggests, some deaths are slower than others. Mortimer's takes a lifetime to complete; a lifetime best described not as a series of unfortunate events, but a series of unbearable tragedies.
Spanning four of America's most significant decades, The Dying of Mortimer Post takes the reader from the protagonist's coming of age in the Pocono Mountains to the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. After the searing end of his military career, the reader accompanies Mortimer on a nationwide quest for understanding an healing. On this journey of discovery, he finds both happiness and sorrow in the backwoods of rural Mississippi, then a much darker side of himself on the unforgiving streets of south central Los Angeles. Only when he has lost everything and is finally ready for the release of death, does Mortimer discover than he already has the one thing he's spent a lifetime seeking, and with it, the chance to finally live again.
At once exciting, poignant, and disturbing, The Dying of Mortimer Post reveals the innermost of the title character in an almost Gump-like manner as he struggles to make sense of a senseless world. A true epic, it is part love story, part war chronicle, part police saga, and all tragedy, but more than anything, it is a tale of redemption in a world where the very concept has ceased to exist.
Excerpt
Prologue
Inglewood, CA, Wednesday November 12th, 2003
Some deaths, I have learned, are slower than others. Mine is such a death; I have been dying it since August 13th, 1967.
It was the height of the Summer of Love, when music was good, and times were bad. Our country was then in the throes of violent change, but the nation’s turmoil had not affected me yet. I was happy beyond words. Then the world stood still for twelve minutes, and when it began revolving again, I was dying a death that would last thirty-six years, three months, and one day. From that day to this.
It was in Ithaca, New York that I began my dying. The road I have followed since has taken me to many terrible places; places I would rather forget. Forgetting, of course, is impossible. That long and arduous road has now brought me to my final destina- tion: the bathroom of a tiny house in Inglewood, California. It was a road I was never meant to travel, but I now know we don’t control our fate, our fate controls us.
I cannot say I am tired of living, for I only really lived for the first seventeen years of my life. Rather, I am tired of dying. I am ready now to be done with it. After all, it has been nearly four decades. Glancing at the clock, I see that it is already past one in the afternoon. The time has come.
Without further rumination, I remove my clothes, lie down in the empty bathtub and place the barrel of my Smith and Wesson Chief’s Special .38 caliber backup revolver in my mouth. I would have preferred to end my life with my actual duty weapon, the same one I was issued in 1974 when I joined the Los Angeles Police Department, but they stripped me of it along with my badge and ID the day before yesterday.
I pull the hammer back, and here I pause for a moment. I have always imagined doing this quickly, without the slightest hesitation, but for some reason I do not. I am but a synapse away from my goal, but here is the brief hesitation upon which I had not planned, eight, or perhaps even ten seconds in duration. They are extremely—immeasurably—significant seconds.
I wonder in this interlude what will become of my things. I suppose everything I have will go to my daughter, Deborah, though I haven’t seen her in thirteen years. I don’t even know if Deborah is married, let alone if she has any children. Perhaps I am a grandfather, as I like to think I am. If that is indeed the case, maybe she will give it all to them, which would make me feel like a good grandfather.
I think of the coming weeks and months, and the significance they would have held for me. I am five days short of my fifty- fourth birthday. In three months, I would have retired from the LAPD after a thirty-year career. They were not very good years, and they certainly did not end well.
I take a final moment to contemplate the last thirty minutes, my last thirty minutes. I picked up the morning Times and saw myself on the front page of the Local News section. That’s what began the final countdown. How old I look in the picture! I’m not really bad looking for a man of nearly fifty-four years. Not at all unlike my father actually, but with a significant paunch which he lacked. I hide it well, I think, at least as seen from a thousand feet up by means of a gyro-controlled telephoto camera mounted in a news helicopter orbiting above my crime scene. I thank God that from this angle nothing below my gunbelt is visible, for even with the dark uniform, the urine stain on the front of my pants would surely be discernable. So there is
appreciation for the small things, even in the final moments.
After reading the Times’ humiliating account of my final day of duty, I downed a glass of scotch and sat there for perhaps twenty minutes contemplating my options. Option, to be more specific, for there was really only one. It just took me that long to come to the final conclusion. So I rose steadily to my feet, poured myself another two fingers, and ambled to the bathtub, the altar I’ve chosen to receive my life’s blood.
I’ve been drinking, yes, but I am not drunk. I’ve been drinking for so many years it takes quite a lot to get me really drunk, a condition, I might add, which I despise, and one in which I’m happy to say I rarely find myself.
I have always been a neat person, careful of my appearance and somewhat fastidious about being tidy. Case in point, after stripping for my suicide, I hung my jeans in the closet and deposited the rest of my clothes in the hamper in the tiny bathroom. I admit I briefly considered leaving them in a heap on the floor in a final act of rebellion, but I could not bring myself to do it. I even closed the cheap plastic sliding shower doors—doors that are designed to resemble expensive glass but fall far short of their goal—so there will be less of a mess for some unfortunate soul to clean up.
My ten seconds of reflection are over. It’s time to get on with it. The webbing between my thumb and my index finger tightens on the trigger. As I squeeze, the doorbell rings.
The noise startles me because I have not heard it in months. Nobody ever comes here. If the police department needs me for another interview regarding my internal affairs case, they page me on the cell phone they have issued solely for this purpose. My father is dead. My mother, imprisoned in her own brain by Alzheimer’s, thinks I’m dead. I have no siblings, and the last time I heard from my ex-wife was six or seven years ago. I have already mentioned the lack of contact with my daughter. I have no friends, so nobody ever calls me and nobody ever comes over. Hence the reason the sound is so strange.
I suppose it is for these reasons that my hands relax their tensing. The trigger does not loosen the hammer with its pa- tiently waiting firing pin. My hand is stayed, not because I have chickened out, but rather due to an intense curiosity as to who might be calling.
Wryly, I think that if it is a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness, I should inform the errant soul just what his interruption delayed me from doing, but I won’t burden even a stranger with that in- formation. It is no longer in my nature to inflict intentional mis- ery upon any man undeserving of it. Although I have done so many times in the decades since I began my dying, it was never something I was comfortable with. I don’t even like to think of the time when my actions caused pain and suffering to others, not even before I take my own life. Truly, I think, I really was a nice guy. If someone should say at my funeral, “He was a nice guy,” he would neither be exaggerating nor lying.
Slightly irritated at myself for the delay, I get up and throw a robe on to answer the door, and get the shock of what will now be my somewhat extended life.
I would have been far less surprised if God Himself stood on my porch.
It’s called the northern lights.
Professional Reviews
Dwight Jon Zimmerman, author of THE VIETNAM WAR: A GRAPHIC HISTORY
In THE DYING OF MORTIMER POST, author Barry Ozeroff has written an emotionally-wrenching page-turner that scores top marks for its ability to sustain a high level of drama from start to finish. The Vietnam War sequences alone are the equal of anything written by W.E.B. Griffen.
Tony Lazzarini, past president of the Military Writer's Society of America, and author of HIGHEST TRADITIONS: MEMORIES OF WAR
The descriptions of Mortimer Post’s life challenges are realistic and accurate due to Ozeroff’s diligent research and own personal experiences. This fast paced and well-written book reminds the reader that sometimes our worst enemy is only a reflection away.
Five years have passed. The sequel to the award-winning Chapel of Eternal Love, this book revisits the same couples in the first book, and where the lives have taken them since they left the altar at The Chapel of Eternal Love
The gifted and fascinating Urban Poet, Asa D Seeley, once again speaks. He introduces a New Genre of Poetry...Reality Confrontation. Juxtaposed with Essay and staying true to his unique style, Asa brings a breath of...fresh air...to the world of poet
Imogene, a country-bred girl, longs to make a life for herself in New York City. She joins forces with her former college roommate to start a movie production company in the big city.
