When Mandi Fisher passed away suddenly and unexpectedly, she never had a chance to say goodbye.

The traumatic experience left her husband, Jason Fisher, reeling.

"She was this wonderful human being that so many people adored," he says. "I didn't want the world to forget about her."

This year, the world is meeting Mandi and carrying on her legacy with the release of "To Where You Are," a tribute to Mandi and the story of finding a path to unconditional love through grief and trauma.

On its first day of sales the book skyrocketed to the number one spot on Amazon.com in new releases in Parenting Hyperactive Children & Children with Disabilities.

Currently it is number 89 in the category of Biographies of People with Disabilities and number 323 in the Grief & Bereavement category.

Jason Fisher, known locally as a candidate in the 2018 election to the Alabama State Senate to represent District 32, lost his wife, Mandi, in 2012 when a massive blood clot formed in her back, suffocating her.

Initially Fisher said he began journaling soon after Mandi's death as a cathartic response to the grief processing journey. About four years later he considered turning his memories into a book, but the dots weren't quite connected yet.

"I had some parts in mind, but I wasn't ready to sit down and write without it being a tremendously emotional experience," he says.
Working through those difficult memories gave him closure.

"I knew that if I could not talk about the worst day I couldn't write the book," he says. "I set out to first prove to myself that I could write about that day, and it was very hard."

The second reason he wrote it was to give the couple's special needs daughter McKenzie, just a toddler when her mother died, memories of her mother.

"I knew McKenzie, being developmentally challenged, would not have remembered her mom. I wanted to give her something, in case anything ever happened to me, so she would know who her parents were," he says.

While parenting his daughter alone for the last 10 years Fisher has also become passionate about the issue of single parenting.

"This world is not built for single parents. The quality of life is difficult," he says. "Sometimes we tend to categorize single parents as a subsection of the population and forget what they could contribute to society if they had equal footing."

McKenzie was diagnosed with both autism and chromosome 18 deletion, a rare disorder that can cause developmental delays and physical issues.

Kenzie spent 133 days in the NICU and since then Fisher has become an advocate not just for research but for better access to education for special needs children. Fisher donated all the proceeds of the book to The Chromosome 18 Registry and Research Society through the month of February.

While Fisher's work certainly requires a tissue nearby, it's also fun. Fisher says he dedicated a healthy portion of the book to describing who Mandi was and why she was such an "attractive force" to those around her.

"I think people are surprised by how many positive memories are in there and how many funny stories are in there," he says. "Mandi had a great sense of humor. She could walk into a room and just light it up."

Fisher said he was striving for that balance as he wrote.

"I didn't want to write a completely sad book, that's not how Mandi was," he says.