Before The Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson

It's 1999 and ten-year-old Zachariah Jr.'s (ZJ) father is a famous football player who has won several Super Bowl championships. His famous father, a tight end, is known as "Zachariah 44" Johnson.

ZJ has three best friends: Ollie, Daniel and Darry. Ollie who loves math, who has green eyes and a red Afro was left outside a Texas church as a baby. He was adopted by a preacher and his wife. His mother, Bernadette is a widow and sometimes visits ZJ's mom for a cup of coffee.

ZJ's life begins to change when the new millennium comes. While celebrating New Years Eve, December 31, 1999 with Ollie, Darry and Daniel at his home, ZJ's father becomes angry over the noise. They are listening to Prince's 1999 and his dad comes into their room, yelling and asking who the boys are. ZJ and his friends at first think he was joking, but ZJ's father didn't seem to know who they were.

The next Friday after school, when ZJ asks his friends to come over, they each find an excuse not to come. However, on Sunday Daniel shows up and the two boys work together on a puzzle during the rainy afternoon.

ZJ's father says his head hurts all the time. Other times, everything seems fine. ZJ and his parents have a delicious dinner, his father and mother dancing in their living room. As his father's headaches worsen, he is told he has to stop playing football and eventually can no longer drive. As the doctors struggle to determine what's wrong, ZJ struggles to cope with what this means for his father and their family.

Discussion

Before The Ever After tells the story of a young boy whose life begins to unravel as his father starts to experience symptoms of what is now called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). CTE is a degenerative brain disease that often occurs in people who have suffered concussions and other repeated head trauma over a period of time. Athletes such as football and hockey players, boxers, and soldiers who have experienced brain injury from explosive blasts on the battlefield are at risk, but so are those who suffer head injuries in other settings as well. These injuries result in a build up of a protein called tau in the brain. This protein which smothers brain cells, affects the areas of the brain that are responsible for memory, the regulation of emotions and other important functions. 

CTE was discovered by Dr. Bennet Omalu, a Nigerian-born doctor who studied the brain of former NFL player Tim Webster whose mental health had seriously deteriorated prior to his death of a heart attack in 2002. Omalu found tau proteins in Webster's brain. Omalu named the condition Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and in his paper to the medical journal, Neurology, in 2005, he suggested that Webster's health issues were directly related to the hits he had taken as a football player. 

His paper was not well received by the NFL, which suggested his research had serious flaws. Undaunted, Omalu examined the brain of a second NFL football player, found the same proteins in his brain and wrote a second paper to Neurology. Again the NFL refused to accept his findings, but further investigations on the brains of more ex-football players continued to support Omalu's conclusions. His work caught the attention of the media and eventually CTE gained acceptance as a real and serious disease.

In Before The Ever After, ZJ's father, Zachariah is an outstanding tight end with a professional football team and has won Super Bowl championships. The story is set in late 1999 into the year 2000, before Dr. Bennet Omalu's research and the discovery of the effects of repeated injuries to the brain. Zachariah's story is told through the eyes of his twelve-year-old son, ZJ as he remembers how his father's illness began, the events leading up to his beloved father's hospitalization and how he, his mother and his friends struggled to cope.

 In the poem, Before the Ever After, ZJ describes life before his father, "Zachariah 44" who is only thirty-four years old and in the prime of his career, became ill. Before the ever after there was going to Village Ice Cream, people recognizing his father, pointing and smiling, picnics on Sunday afternoons in Central Park, and ZJ and his father making up songs. ZJ's father calls him "little man" and often endearingly refers to ZJ's friend Ollie who was abandoned at birth as "my son from another mother and father."  These descriptions portray ZJ's father as a kind, involved father who cared about those around him.

But as his illness progresses, there are changes, subtle at first, like the shaking hands and the incident on New Years Eve 1999,  the headaches and the memory loss. It soon becomes apparent that ZJ's father is not quite well.  In the poem, The Trees, about the trees in their front yard that ZJ and his father named, he describes his father:

"Some days he seems just like that tree.
Like he's not his whole self anymore. Like one by one
somebody or something
took his branches."

Many of the poems in the novel emphasize what ZJ's  father is experiencing and how ZJ and his mother struggle to understand what is happening as the the man they love fades. ZJ often describes his father, a big man at 233lbs as looking small when he is experiencing his memory problems and confusion. Each of these memories remain strong for the young ZJ.  In the poem, Call Me Little Man, ZJ remembers the first time his father forgot the name he always called him by. 

"The first time you forgot my name
feels like yesterday. Feels like an hour ago.
Feels like I blink and you forgetting
is right there in front of me."

Another poem, Audition, drives home how ZJ's father at times couldn't managed even the simplest of tasks. This poem relates how it took seventy-two unsuccessful takes for a commercial. His father was unable to remember his line, "I'm Zachariah Johnson, and this is my car." and get into the car.

Many poems highlight the difficulties medical doctors were experiencing at this time to understand what was happening to football players like Zachariah. In the poem Waiting, ZJ talks about how they are always waiting. 

"We're always waiting.
Waiting for another doctor.
Waiting for more tests. Waiting for test results.
Waiting for new treatments."

It is evident the doctors don't know what is wrong with his father. In the poem, The Broken Thing, ZJ describes how the doctors don't know what is wrong.

"There's not a name for the way
Daddy's brain works now.
The way it forgets little things like
what day it is and big things like
the importance of wearing a coat outside
on a cold day. There's not a name
for the way I catch him crying
looking around the living room like
it's his first time seeing it." 

Before The Ever After is also a novel about friendship and how friends can help one another deal with loss and the difficulties of life. At first ZJ's friends abandon him when they witness his father's unusual angry outburst on New Years Eve. It is more out of fear, as they don't understand what is happening. However, as his father's condition deteriorates, ZJ's friends rally around him. He is still part of their circle, going for bike rides and snowball fights. When his mother holds a birthday party for his dad's thirty-fifth birthday, his friends arrive to celebrate. In the poem, "Company", Ollie, Daniel and Darrie meet ZJ in the schoolyard after his father is hospitalized.

"We heard about your dad, they say.
You know we got you, ZJ.
Ollie even gives me a hug, bro style, pounds my back,
then Daniel and Darry do the same.

This is a whole nother kind of pigskin dream
to have your boys surrounding you,
telling you they got you,
their hands on your shoulders,
their arms around your neck."

Professional football has offered many young men a chance to escape poverty and difficult circumstances. Before The Ever After simply and effectively highlights the price many of these men and their families have paid for such a chance. With Dr. Bennet Omalu's research, perhaps some families will be spared such a price. Jacquelline Woodson has crafted a deeply touching novel that explores this issue for younger readers.

Book Details:

Before The Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson
New York: Nancy Paulsen Books      2020
161 pp.