Lifeline Online: A Memoir
Do people really become best friends on the Internet?
Rosemarie felt dead, without feelings for anything or anyone, and only the beat of her heart kept her alive. Why did she feel this way? What was so bad that a fairly healthy woman would even consider suicide? In desperation, Rosemarie reached out in 1995 to connect with someone-anyone-and found a dear friend in an unlikely place-on the Internet. Thus began one of the deepest friendships she had ever known and created a virtual lifeline for the both of them. For the next nine years they lived their lives in daily contact, laughing, crying, supporting each other in a relationship unlike any either could have imagined.
Reviews
By K. Trout "Kaye" (Pagosa Springs, CO USA)
Quoting from the back cover:
I love honest writers, even when the truth may not be particularly attractive. Such is the case in this memoir, Lifeline Online. It's a story about average women living life as it comes, trying to do the best they can, and finding some happiness along the way. Ms. Lamatt's first sentence on the back cover ..."RoseMarie felt dead, without feelings for anything or anyone, and only the beat of her heart kept her alive."... is quite an opening hooker. I believe there are many women who can identify with this thought at some point in their lives. And so, therein lies the appeal of this memoir . . . how did RoseMarie get past this point?, how did she find something of value?
Rm Lamatt's writing style is diarylike in a sense . . . rich in details; and yet, she keeps you interested and turning pages to the end. Her story is well written and well edited. As to its market appeal, I think middle-aged and older women might find it inspiring, particularly if they, too, have a desire to write.
By chall3432 (Florida)
The Internet is a popular and vital part of the lives of many of us today and like most things, it has both good points and bad. For instance, today's news is filled with stories of computer chat rooms. Many are danger zones, some pleasant pastimes, but some are beneficial.
Rose Marie Lamatt shows there are positive sides to Internet connections.
In her new book, 'Lifeline Online', she tells how a chat room became a lifeline for her and a friend she met in one. At the lowest point in her life, she turned to a stranger to reveal her innermost grief and fears. The two lives came together over the Internet with just the stroke of a key.
They lived in daily contact. They laughed, cried and supported each other in a relationship unlike either would have ever imagined. Times were hard for both of them, but, with each other, they found they could make it through each day and look forward to the next. Lamatt, an Alzheimer's caregiver, couldn't wait to sign into a chat room at night to make her feel connected to life. For years it was her lifeline.
They shared joys, sorrows, experiences they would have never spoken of in person, because it seemed so much easier than sitting face to face. The two friends found they had many things in common and, in an ironic turn of events, their lives eventually paralleled each other's.
Lifeline Online is a touching, easy-read book about a very deep friendship, found in a most unlikely place.
Fears Flutterby
In
a world filled with panic and fear, a woman struggles to find her real
self
"She struggled writing the book, not knowing who the real person was. Was she the child of her mother and father or the wife to her ex-husband? Was she the mother of her two children, or the person full of fear that she knew so well? Was she the caregiver to her friend? Was she the unforgiving person or the loving person, the child of God? Who was the real person? Or was she all the above?"
Joanna Lamatt is trapped inside a circle of panic and fear, which have colored her daily thoughts to the point where she is living a neurotic existence. As her twenty-six year marriage is falling apart, she meets Catherine, a woman whose tenderness and caring have a profound impact on her life. As the friendship blossoms, Joanna makes the decision to leave the marriage and move in with Catherine. Through their time together, Joanna undergoes a process of self-discovery and slowly emerges like a butterfly from a cocoon. When Catherine is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, Joanna must find a way to let go of the one person she has relied on for support to face life on her own.
As a testament to God's influence in her life and the healing powers of love, Lamatt penned Fears Flutterby.
Reviews
“This book was a refreshing change in pace for me-from fiction. I do read autobiographies but typically of a historical nature-famous people. Fears Flutterby is about a woman's life-her childhood, marriage, family, problems, friendships, divorce, and an abiding love. It could be about you or me. It's a story about her ongoing challenge to find and deal with the source of her fears. Also, it's about the love and compassion she found inside herself when she was challenged to deal with a special friend's Alzheimer's disease.
“I think Fears Flutterby will particularly appeal to and touch mature women who have been married, had children and are possibly divorced because they can relate to her problems...and too, it may appeal to young women who enjoy learning from other women. It definitely will appeal to all readers who enjoy true life stories about challenge and growth. I have to admit...it may bring up tears. Quoting from the book, 'So, when do you part? Never-if you have loved another, you're never parted.'
“Fears Flutterby is the author's debut as a published writer, and I think
it's well done.”
—Kaye Trout at Midwest Book Review
“A window to a child's world only known by those with similar fears. A
confusion in searching for the niche in a young woman's life that is continually
interrupted by having to deal with those unshared fears. And, eventually,
the courage, love and happiness of finding the self that could give and
receive love, help to make her feel safe and discover the love of another
person that only happens once in a lifetime. Ultimately, having to give
that loved one's soul to the only 'power' that could deal with the horrific
devastation of a disease called 'Alzheimers'.”
—Review from Carole
“January 2006, rm Lamatt invites us into her very complex life with a
true sense of reality and warmth. While dealing with the pressures of the
picture perfect marriage of the '60's, she is also being challenged by
her own mysterious and frightening health issues. This also in a time when
women's emotional issues were too often dismissed lightly. Her own search
brings her to what may appear to be difficult choices, yet as vulnerable
as she believes she is, she has the courage to make them. Her personal
search is slowly diminished by the need to care for her dearest love. Through
heart gripping, and sometimes painful retelling, Lamatt forces us to look
at our own lives, our loved ones, and those we care for in a very, very
real way. It is a story that anyone who plans to grow older, or knows someone
that does, must read.”
—Review from Kay
Excerpt
Excerpt from FEARS FLUTTERBY
- Copyright© 2005 by Rm Lamatt
All rights reserved. The following material is protected under the
copyright laws of the United States of America. The reproduction or utilization
of this work, in whole or in part in any form, is forbidden without the prior
written permission of Rm Lamatt.
CHAPTER ONE - THOUGHTS
Till death do you part? These are the words I had heard more than forty years ago standing in front of a Catholic Priest. I had said, “I do” to that question, and now I wonder what they really mean. Do they mean when the heart stops beating or do they mean when the brain stops sending signals?
These thoughts have been near, but the words so far from my brain. I have kept them hidden or unknown to my own self, stuffed in the back of my mind where others couldn’t know of them. Now that they have finally come forward, I’m constantly in front of the computer getting them down on paper.
Needing a break, I came outside to sit on the porch, in a rickety old yellow web chair a friend had given me when I moved here in 2001. Under the balcony the squirrels are playing, running from tree to tree and mockingbirds mocking, flitting back and forth from limb to limb. The butterflies intrigue me the most, when they come to the second floor to say hello.
Today I feel like a vine that has climbed out of the dirt to show itself to the sun for the first time. I’ve been in the same clothes for days – beige ragged tee shirt, black silk shorts and tan moccasins. I disconnect myself from the computer screen once in awhile to eat and drink. Food shopping happens possibly once a week, if I’m up to it, otherwise it’s a slice of bread out of the freezer, toasted with peanut butter and a glass of milk. Not such a great diet this past year and a half. I’m eating less but still have put on weight from sitting and no exercise. I’m sure my fingers have lost weight from everyday typing, sometimes ten and twelve hours a day. The book is almost done, maybe a few corrections here and there.
My condo overlooks the ninth green of the golf course, which gives me more reflection to write than I’ve ever had. I’ve lived here just over three years and don’t know a soul, except to say hello to the next door neighbors who arrive in fall and leave in spring. Snowbirds they’re called, and I’m sure they probably think I’m a hermit or someone who’s a little loony, staying inside all day when there are tennis courts, a pool and a golf course right below me. Maybe one day I’ll join in the fun but not just yet. I’ve got this quest to finish and finding the little black books has helped me further the story.
Sometimes I feel old – older than the folks who live here, who are seventy, eighty and more. Me? I’m in my early sixties, but feel older when the words won’t come and I fight to remember.
Sipping a glass of ice water and lemon I watch the golfers come off the green from their day of fun. They’re checking scorecards and getting ready to go home and start dinner. I loved this time of day years ago playing golf – late afternoon sun making shadows so long you couldn’t see the holes on the greens. This course is small and quaint, similar to another I lived on once before.
I remember the days of golf when it was a passion, and sometimes the only thing in my life. But what the heck, I never thought there was anything wrong with that. It kept me sane and out in the world of nature, which I loved. The winds of time have changed now, for illness is attacking my body. Funny, these bodies don’t last long. You’d think God would have given us a body like Abraham, who lived three hundred years or more. Golf did bring me God though, if that’s possible. Green grass, trees, birds, squirrels, butterflies – all living energies of God, were the feelings I had while walking the course.
I once knew golf like the back of my hand. I could make the ball go right or left, stop or roll. Yes, I knew it like the back of my hand, but my hand has changed over the twenty years. Now it shows wrinkles, blue lines and brown dots. I’m living like my beginning days of golf, when I didn’t know which way the ball would go when the club struck it. I thought life got easier when you aged. But it gets more difficult each year. At least this last year and a half have been productive.
I’m feeling my mortality and thinking I don’t know where I’ll be next year. My lease was signed for another year in November of 2003 and it’s almost the middle of the next year. It’s sliding by too fast and the book has to be done by the end of the year. The money or my health must not run out.
When the paramedics were called last summer I thought for sure it was the end. I was angry because I still hadn’t finished the story. I had started it when I was sixteen, when my life changed so drastically, then again at age forty-one, when I found out who I really was. And now I’ve found the little black books that have led me further. I know now, I can’t put it away again. . .
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