“Waiting for Elizabeth” A Love Story from Author Ben Bryant
- Posted on 16th February 2015
- in celebrity books, Entertainment, entertainment books, Hollywood memoirs, Love Story
- by Ben
Waiting for Elizabeth, the third volume of my memoir trilogy is a true
love story.
In this blog my books have usually been identified as Hollywood memoirs, celebrity books or celebrity stories but those appellations are for search engines and don’t always represent the actual content. Oh sure, I wrote about lots of famous people in my life but until my marketing guru pointed out that fact it had never even occurred to me. These folks – from Charles Bronson through Carole King and Paul Newman to Frank Zappa – were colleagues I worked and/or socialized with as I made my way through show-biz first as an actor and then as a producer/AD and finally as a director. 99.9% of them were lovely unassuming and very professional people and I enjoyed knowing them. Their stories were part of my life and I wrote about them as a matter of course.
With this conclusion of my personal journey – which, by the way, ain’t over yet! – we enter into the most challenging chapters of my life. I know, life is supposed by many to become easier when a healthy man reaches his seniority but in my case that hasn’t happened just yet. Health; yes, seniority; yes, ease; no. But if you’ve read Three Stages and/or Circumstances Beyond My Control you know that I have always thrived on challenges so “ease” has rarely been my condition.
The principal theme of Waiting for Elizabeth is – as you might guess from the title – the turmoil, trials and tribulations in my relationship with the Love of my Life, the beauteous and in every way, splendid Elizabeth. I won’t spoil the story here but I will tell you this much: it has a happy ending.
Beginning in 1990 – with the occasional flashback to previous decades – volume three brings the reader into the twenty-first century up to the very recent past as the author and his mate struggle with one crisis after another including the dissolution of their thirty-year marriage and the uncertainties that result. And these difficulties are less than half of the story. What we both learned and how we both grew and rose above these trials is the fun part.
I’ll close this post with some excerpts from Elizabeth’s foreword:
I was shocked when Ben asked me to write this foreword. Truth be told, I didn’t even want him to write the book. … But the determination (bordering on bull-headedness) and dedication of this man to tell his story, was non-negotiable. So here we are.
Much to my dismay at times, he read every chapter of this book to me. And though it was often “not a day at the beach”, it wasn’t as difficult as I’d anticipated. Toward the end of the reading, I was struck by an unlikely image. It was of the phenomenal documentary “Winged Migration”, where we got to witness birds of every conceivable variety, leaving their nests and flying thousands of miles over oceans and mountains and continents – flying it seemed forever … It was extraordinary, thrilling, inspiring, and to me, exhausting. …
And somehow, as I listened to Ben’s story, I had a similar reaction. It wasn’t exhaustion, it was amazement at the resiliency he’d brought to his personal journey. …
Furthermore, and perhaps most significant, through many of his most stressful periods – even our separation and divorce, as devastating as they were – Ben maintained his equanimity. The vicissitudes of life seemed to be no match for his innately positive perspective. And I was amazed as he shared his rendition of our most arduous times, that I wasn’t more upset. I could hear that his love for me had remained despite the anger and hurt, and that the love ultimately eclipsed them. Moreover, given that his ground of being is firmly ensconced in his steadfast sense of humor, laugh-out-loud-funny was often the result.
So I emerge from this scrutiny of his/our passage with great admiration for him. … It seems he could flap his wings forever. I salute that.
I’m very proud of him and his indomitable and adventurous spirit. By the way, I love him.
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