Bedtime Stories for the Living by Jay Armstrong is a non-fiction compilation written in vignettes of “A Father's Funny and Heartbreaking Memoir About The Power of Pursuing Your Dreams”. Armstrong begins with an introduction that shows us what inspired the book. Facing two diagnoses, one of a brain disease and the other autoimmune, Armstrong began to make changes from writing bedtime stories over the course of five years for the general public to writing bedtime stories of real life for his children and, hopefully, his children's children, and onward. Interspersed between original stories are six letters he has written for his kids, which to me are the most touching part of the book.

As a father I am able to empathize to a certain degree with what Jay Armstrong hopes to achieve through his sharing of Bedtime Stories for the Living. From a personal point of view, my parents were part of the largest cross-migration in human history, one where millions died. My mother has since passed and my father does not want to speak of it, which means this massive part of our family history is lost. And that's an incredible shame. Still, Armstrong has shown me that there are stories to tell, nonetheless. I loved the story Signs, about a trip to Target in which Armstrong points out all the ways the universe gives us signs. It is both hilarious and touching and, like all the other stories, is something future generations of Armstrongs will adore.

Jay Armstrong is determined to make up for all the bedtime stories he missed with his children and knock them out like a 1996 MLB Homerun Derby baseball in Bedtime Stories for the Living: A Father's Funny and Heartbreaking Memoir About The Power of Pursuing Your Dreams. The entirety of his work for this book totals a mind-blowing forty-eight tales, all true to the best of his memory, and as a testament to the writer's highly prolific contributions to the literary world. Armstrong's work ranges in length and tone from the short and funny why-why-why story called Dad, Why is it Raining, to the slightly longer and beautiful story along those same lines called Bowling with God.

Bedtime Stories for the Living has the capacity to make a reader swing from laughter to contemplation, on to watery eyes, and back to laughter in the span of half-a-dozen pages. The watery eyes I mention were strong as I read Celebrating Victory with the Dead, a story where Armstrong admits he is an Eagles fan. That one really hit me in the feels. Seriously though, Jay Armstrong plucks at the heartstrings by including letters to his kids, and these truly are on the difficult side to read. There is one, in particular, a letter to his daughter Haley, in which he describes a slice of life when he is reading an essay she's written. He begins to cry, and then he does not say all the things he should have. So he does this in the letter and it is perfection. The letters all end with the same three lines: “Good night. I love you. See you in the morning.” I hope those mornings carry on with Armstrong and his kids for a long time.