KAZU Greenroom: Beth Ann Mathews on her memoir 'Deep Waters'

Beth Ann Mathews was in the Marine Biology graduate program at UC Santa Cruz when she met her husband, Jim, also a marine biologist. They got married, and Mathews moved from the mild Santa Cruz coast to the intense climate of Alaska for her husband's job. They had a son and were ready to live happily ever after. Or so they thought.

While repairing their house one day, Jim suffered a stroke, which changed their lives forever. Now, Mathews has written a memoir about this experience called Deep Waters. Mathews spoke with KAZU’s Dylan Music about her book, who began by asking her to recall the traumatic day that changed their lives forever.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Beth Ann Mathews (BAM): So my husband, at the beginning of the book, was a very healthy 56-year-old man, and we were getting ready to sell our house. So he had been working on repairing the skylight. And minutes later... my totally healthy husband was suddenly gasping and choking and could barely walk. He had a bilateral medullary stroke, and in his case, it was not caused by a clot or by plaque buildup but by the delamination of the interior of that left vertebral artery, which is one of two main ones that go into the brainstem. When I first heard that word… brainstem stroke, that was pretty alarming because your brainstem controls your basic functioning and breathing. We had chosen to have our son late in life and did that based on, "Yeah, we're going to be there for him." Then suddenly, this freak accident happens. It absolutely jolted our lives and, for me, changed many assumptions about the future.

Dylan Music (DM): So early in the memoir, after this happens, you're staying in Seattle, where your husband, Jim, has been helicoptered from Alaska, where you had all lived, you and your son and Jim. And you are staying at a hotel with your son as Jim recovers, and you write a poem one night called “Brush Stroke Skylight.” So I was wondering if maybe you could read that poem.

BAM: I haven't read that in a while, thank you.

DM: Thank you.

BAM: To me, good poetry distills life or distills circumstances down, boils them down into just the essence of a moment or a period of time. And I think it helped me understand what I was most worried about. I really was worried for myself about losing my husband, but I also was very worried about our son growing up without a father. And I hadn't articulated that specifically to myself prior to that moment. And even now, remembering it, it obviously kind of catches me up.

DM: As the book goes on, you take a really deep look at your relationship with Jim versus the other things in your life, and it really kind of becomes this big kind of turning point/struggle towards the end of the book. But you come up with a decision and a realization in the final paragraph of the book, and I was wondering if you could read that final passage.

DM: Author and marine biologist Beth Ann Mathews, reading from her memoir "Deep Waters," which is available now at most booksellers.