Que Sera: A Memoir of Survival from a Congenital Heart Defect

＂The future’s not ours to see
Que sera, sera.＂

BARRY CULL wasn’t supposed to survive to his fifth birthday. He was born with a hole in his heart at a time when that was a death sentence; however, times were changing, and an experimental surgery under development in Canada gave his parents hope.

Barry did survive: He survived childhood open-heart surgery from the man who pioneered the operation. He got to hold his baby sister, and a baby brother after that. He moved from England to Canada and back, and back again. He grew, went to camp and to an experimental self-directed high school, took an ill-advised hitchhiking trip to the West Coast, played in folk and garage bands, and eventually earned a masters in child development psychology.

But the trauma of Barry’s heart condition, and the things he and his family sacrificed to see him to adulthood, would reverberate throughout his life. His parents’ relationship broke down as both parents retreated into self-destructive coping mechanisms-his father into alcoholism, his mother into self-delusion and fantasy. He was emotionally abused through his teens and young adulthood as he struggled to find his feet.

Long after his heart was beating at its full potential, Barry would find himself facing down the lingering specter of what had happened when he was just a child. His story is one of trauma and resilience, of struggle and failure-and, in the end, of healing.