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Local Author Publishes Book On Hope And A Journey Through Bereavement

photo provided Author Megan Prescott chronicles her journey through grief in her new book due out on June 30th.

Tuesday June 16, 2009

By Cookie Steponaitis

   June 30th, 2009 will mark the end of a twenty two year journey that began in Addison County and has continued to the American southwest. It is a journey of love, loss, grief and coming to terms with questions that seem to defy answers. It is a process that took many drafts to complete. It brings the author full circle with a peaceful heart who offers a tool to those who are in the midst of dealing with the pain of death and loss of loved ones or about to experience it.

   Megan Prescott grew up in Panton, Vermont and attended Vergennes Union High School. Nurtured and supported by her mother and VUHS teacher Nancy Prescott, Megan grew to believe all things were possible. “It was my mom who taught me to love writing and to use correct grammar!” she remarked. “How someone could make diagramming sentences fun is amazing to me, but she did it.  Writing a composition a week in her English class in 7th and 10th grade was absolutely vital for my love of writing today. She also really encouraged my drawing ability as well.  I was always making cards and pictures for her and you'd think each one was a masterpiece the way she would react.  Bless her heart, it made me feel like I could do anything-write, draw- anything.  Her belief in me transcended her death and has no doubt helped me make it to this brighter today.”

    Several months before Megan’s nineteenth birthday, Nancy was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia and died eight months later at the age of 50.  Less than a month later, her brother Adam was a passenger in a car that stuck another vehicle, killing him and three other people. The grief felt by Megan and the whole community made the end of that year and months to come very difficult. Megan has spent the last two decades of her life using art, creativity and the written word to express her own loss and reflect the support she received from those around her.

    Squirrel and Oak: A Story of Hope, will be released by Halo International on June 30th and is a story of the questioning, struggle and process of grieving. The main character is a squirrel that goes to a place of thinking that allows the process to be one of healing and love, instead of darkness and disparagement. Squirrel does not make the trip alone after she loses her oak tree friend as she is supported by the wise Sun.  The book is designed for children of all ages and is a tool with which to engage in deeper conversations centering on the issue of death. The book celebrates life and looks at the process of grieving as a process acknowledging that the path for each person is different and unique.

    Megan credits her growing up in Addison County for the setting and inspiration for this story. She remarked, “I spent most of my youth outside where I developed a great love of nature and animals. Nature shows us that life is continual through her cycles which is the basic foundation of my story. Growing up my backyard was meadows as far as I could see and I was truly happiest in those days, laying in a field somewhere staring up at the clouds.”

    Megan’s mother Nancy Prescott was a fixture at VUHS and sheparded over a thousand students through their middle school years. As an English teacher and a drama coach, she reached into students hearts and helped them craft visions of themselves as people and as members of the school and local community. Always one for diagramming sentences, she taught grammar with a passion that was passed to many of her charges. Her death ripped a hole in the school community sending shock waves among the children and adults. English chairperson of the time, Ann Sullivan crafted a poem which was placed in the VUHS Yearbook the same month that Nancy passed away. An excerpt from this documents the struggle that not only Megan and her family felt, but the community as well. An excerpt from the VUHS 1988 Yearbook Memoriam by Ann Sullivan reads, “Nancy Prescott was the consummate English teacher, the parts of speech that make up the whole. She was the noun. As “person”, she was the friendly face, the mother of VUHS, the coach, the snowflake lady. Nancy was a verb. As state of being she represented constancy for her students. As action, she worked unceasingly to bring out the best in her pupils. We are left with the simple punctuation. The exclamation-our shock and dismay at hearing the sad news! The question mark of “Why?” Both children and adults struggled with the loss.

    People interested in reading Squirrel and Oak: A Story of Hope can order a copy through Megan’s website at www.artbymap.com  or Halo Publishing at their website www.halopublishing.com. As Vermont blooms and the shades of flowers, plants and blossoms fill our minds and hearts, this is a time to pause and reflect on those not here, their legacies left behind and that in all people their comes a time to face the issue of loss and grief. Megan Prescott’s book is a celebration of her mother, her brother and the journey all of us undertake at some time on our lives.

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