Funeral in a Feminine Dress

MJ calls it “calligraphy in blood.” A father's loss of "true love" created a twisted, corrupted courtship that produced 34 years of abuse, pain, and depravity within a family. A son's discovery of "true love" saved his life, and inspired an amazingly loving, happy, family that achieved virtue. These two stories merge into a journey most call shocking, inspirational, and unforgettable. A mother’s hideous secret, a son’s complicity in her abuse, a grisly act of revenge… MJ’s father was one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet—unless you were the mother of his three sons. MJ’s mother was a bold feminist and hopeless romantic whose inclination to love was her demise. Verma lived a hellish life—what the author calls an “un-romance”—fueled by liquor, lies, desperation, and hatred. Why didn't his mother fight back? MJ’s lurid and intense memoir will cheer yet incense you. MJ was a boy whose parents loved him but, overcome by their demons, caused him misery. Instead of voicing anger, MJ thanks Dad and Mom for their genetic gifts and life lessons. He spotlights his mother as his hero, detailing how her abuse increased as she was bloodied defending her grandson from a devilish mother. He praises the nuns at his school for their whacks to the head and for never giving up on him.

Readers will marvel at how MJ escaped this toxic swamp—and his own death wish behaviors—and nine years after their first date, married his high school sweetheart. Today, together, they celebrate their 36 year marriage, too much like a 1950's family sitcom to be true - but it is. MJ constructed a high-powered business career where family was always his top priority; a choice that cost him jobs and big money but elevated him to the kind of man his mother wanted him to be.

His mother's suffering convinces him God's plan is not working. Praising his Catholic education, MJ agrees all religion is good that teaches people to be good, yet explains how God is a potentially dangerous myth. Interestingly, clergy and his religious friends say his story is a tool to love God more.

This memoir recounts the past but is all about our tomorrows; full of life lessons for men, women and families. Posed are complex, critical questions of good versus evil, relationships –honesty-sex, work/career fixation versus family, God and religion versus personal responsibility.