A son’s triumph

Dr. Richard Moss considers his words carefully before speaking. “There is guilt,” he explains what only time has eased on his heart.

The doctor recently published a book, “Matilda’s Triumph,”, a memoir set to the backdrop of his mother’s struggle with a debilitating stroke that occurred in 1998. 

His careful speaking manner is reflected in the finely crafted sentences and storytelling in the homage to his mother and her struggles raising five boys on her own set against the backdrop of a debilitating stroke. The book fairly bleeds the doctor’s love for his mother as it switches from the familiar scenes of Jasper and Dubois County in the 90s to the Bronx in the 50s and 60s.

The reason for his guilt and pain are apparent quickly in the well-paced memoir. In what seems like moments of the stroke occurring, Moss is faced with a single decision that could have had a great impact on his mother’s health.

There is no tediousness that sometimes accompanies books of this sort; a feat unto itself. Moss uses short passages about how he deals with his mother’s condition, his relationship with his children and wife, his brothers, as well as his medical studies to understand the stroke affecting his mother. Interspersed in this continued drama are vignettes that reveal the laughs, tears and terrors of growing up in the Bronx. Through these juxtaposed worlds we see the doctor’s love and guilt develop.

Moss wrote the story over ten years by stealing a few hours a week in the attic of his home away from his active family and medical practice.

“When you finish the book, then the real work begins,” Moss explained about the publishing experience.

It took five years and 100s of rejections to finally see the story published, but it only happened after it was pointed out that Moss may have been pitching the wrong story to the wrong crowd.

He had been pitching the book to large New York City-based publishing houses as a medical detective story when an employee, Nancy Blessinger, read the book and provided the doctor with some insight. “Nancy is a strong Christian lady and she read it, and was crying and loved it,” Moss explained. “She said, ‘you are pitching it just totally the wrong way.'”

Nancy told the doctor his book wasn’t so much a medical detective story as it was a human interest story of a woman overcoming huge obstacles. “She said it was an inspiration,” Moss said. “She told me to pitch it to the Christians and the inspirational crowd and the rest, as they say, is history. We found a small Christian publisher, Langmarc Publishing, a small outfit in Austin, Texas.”

There was one caveat for the publisher, Moss had to edit out some of the curse words coloring the Bronx experiences. “We did a lot of cleaning up of that. You know, we were in the Bronx, there are tough situations so, obviously, there are curse words.” Moss explained.

Besides editing out some of the colloquialism of the Bronx, Moss also changed the names of his brothers who had their own struggles with heroin and criminal activities. Now with successful careers, the brothers have approved of his book.

Moss, 59, is the fourth son in Matilda’s brood, her favorite. He originally wanted to be a journalist and has written throughout his life. A New York agent picked up a book he wrote about his three years of volunteer work in Asia, but couldn’t sell it.

He claims the British writer Lawrence Durrell, of The Alexandria Quartet, influenced his style in creating beautiful prose.

“Writing is probably something I should have done in my life, but I went into medicine,” Moss, an otolaryngologist, said.

A talented and successful doctor in his own right, he sways at a pivotal moment in his mother’s stroke and spends much of the time in this memoir attempting to absolve himself of his failure.

He isn’t able to do so in story arc of his mother’s three-week sickness, but in the 15 years since, he has come to terms with it.

“This is a story about my mother,” Moss said. “She was a single parent before the era of the single parent. She was left with five boys to raise on her own with very limited resources. It was my desire to pay a tribute to her to honor her, and to somehow immortalize her story and our story.”

“Matilda’s Triumph” can be purchased online through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Langmarc Publishing. It is also available at Moss’s office at the Medical Arts Building on 13th Street and Just Whimsy, Indigo Roots, and Chocolate Bliss on the Square in Jasper for $18.95.

Dr. Moss lives in Jasper with his wife, Ying, and four children, Arielle, 21, Noah, 19, Adina, 11, and Isaiah, 10.