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Aging

One last move for a beloved mother

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

The delightful Miss Peggy—singer, writer, speaker, pastor’s wife, loving mother, treasured friend—has spent most of her life moving. As her son, Robert, recollects his family’s nomadic ways, he recalls that Miss Peggy has lived in 19 homes over the course of her life. With grace, humor and love, he warmly and tenderly tells us the story of moving her to a new home and a new life in Moving Miss Peggy.

As neighbors, co-workers, friends and family start to notice Miss Peggy’s forgetfulness and actions that could endanger her and others, Benson and his family get together to discuss how best to move her. Anyone living with a family member afflicted with dementia will recognize the slow, sometimes humorous, mostly painful, but eventually redemptive process of making big and little decisions that involve slowly taking away a loved one’s independence.

Benson’s brother Michael, a pastor, visits his mother in order to persuade her to give up driving. “He seemed always to find the right words to persuade her that the next thing that had to be done was the right thing to do, not just for her family but for her own sweet self.” As difficult as surrendering her car keys and her independence is for her, “giving up the burden of it may well have been a gift.”

Finding a new home for Miss Peggy prompts several questions, such as “Can you see your mother living there?” and “Can you see yourself going there to see her?” Once the family locates the right place, they begin the process of packing and moving, hauling away objects that will be divided among family members, strangers and the trash, all of which represent memories of home and mother for them. In the midst of their efforts to move Miss Peggy, Benson discovers that “if we could each do what we did best, there might just be enough to go round to be all the things Miss Peggy might need her children to be for her. Wherever two or three, or even four of us, were gathered, Someone More would be among us.”

Settled in her new place, Miss Peggy’s wandering days seem to be over. Yet, Benson reflects, “in another way, her wandering days have just begun. She has begun to wander her way into a new life, and she will spend a portion of the rest of her life wandering and wondering her way along from day to day, singing more and more about the sea.”

Benson is a graceful storyteller, and his elegant little meditation offers a powerful parable on the unity of a family coming together to face loss with love and courage.

The delightful Miss Peggy—singer, writer, speaker, pastor’s wife, loving mother, treasured friend—has spent most of her life moving. As her son, Robert, recollects his family’s nomadic ways, he recalls that Miss Peggy has lived in 19 homes over the course of her life. With grace, humor and love, he warmly and tenderly tells us the […]
Family & RelationshipsAging

Family ceasefire: finding a way to make peace with your mother

Review by bookpagedev

Love, as they say, is a battlefield, and no one knows this better than Iris Krasnow. After decades of clashing with her strong-willed mother, the best-selling author of Surrendering to Motherhood decided to write a book about how she finally came to terms with this formidable figure in her life. Women caught in similar family conflicts who don’t quite know how to end the hostilities will appreciate Krasnow’s new book, I Am My Mother’s Daughter: Making Peace with Mom Before It’s Too Late. In writing about the special kind of diplomacy required for many mothers and daughters to achieve peace, Krasnow tapped into her own complicated past and interviewed countless women in their 30s and beyond who still had major issues with their mothers. While the women’s backgrounds may vary, she writes, their experiences have brought them to this common conclusion: Ditching old baggage and learning to love our mothers must come before we learn to love, and know, ourselves. Poignant, wise, and thought provoking, I Am My Mother’s Daughter is sure to resonate with female readers of all ages. A woman’s relationship with her mom may never be friction-free, Krasnow says, but both parties can lay aside old grievances and try to move forward. Offering invaluable advice on how to negotiate this delicate territory, Krasnow’s latest is a sensitively written book about compromise and reconciliation. Her message to readers is plain and simple: Forgive and forget while you’ve still got time.

Love, as they say, is a battlefield, and no one knows this better than Iris Krasnow. After decades of clashing with her strong-willed mother, the best-selling author of Surrendering to Motherhood decided to write a book about how she finally came to terms with this formidable figure in her life. Women caught in similar family […]
NonfictionFamily & RelationshipsAging

A difficult—yet lively—journey

Review by John T. Slania

A Bittersweet Season is a cautionary tale for every generation. It is a story about aging, told through the eyes of author Jane Gross as she watches her mother grow old. The book offers enlightening, often alarming information for the elderly; for adult children responsible for taking care of their aging parents; and finally, for younger generations who face a grim future, as money is running out for Social Security.

For sure, A Bittersweet Season deals with a sobering topic. But the narrative is so lively and informative that readers will come away feeling more prepared than pessimistic. Gross doesn’t wallow in self-pity; instead, as she chronicles her elderly mother’s journey from independence to assisted living to a nursing home, she provides broader information about each step in the aging process, so that A Bittersweet Season becomes both a memoir and a how-to book on aging.

As Gross navigates a difficult journey with her mother, she acquires knowledge that she shares with readers. Among her tips: Don’t be impressed by the fancy décors of upscale nursing homes; they are designed to impress family members but do nothing to enhance the care of patients. Pay more attention to the size and qualifications of the staff. She also offers advice on navigating the insurance and government entitlement maze, choosing the best doctors and surviving the emotional rollercoaster of having to care for an elderly parent.

A gifted and experienced journalist, Jane Gross has been providing this kind of insightful writing for many years as a reporter for The New York Times, and most recently as the founder of a Times blog titled The New Old Age. As the nation’s 77 million Baby Boomers approach retirement age, A Bittersweet Season is just the book they need to read. It is an intelligent guide to handling the onset of old age with sagacity and sensitivity, and readers will find it valuable whether they are caring for themselves or their parents, or hoping to make the road to aging less treacherous for future generations.

A Bittersweet Season is a cautionary tale for every generation. It is a story about aging, told through the eyes of author Jane Gross as she watches her mother grow old. The book offers enlightening, often alarming information for the elderly; for adult children responsible for taking care of their aging parents; and finally, for […]
Family & RelationshipsAging

A sensitive look at caring for an aging family member

Review by Alison Hood

Since publishing her groundbreaking book Passages in 1976, Gail Sheehy has trained her keen eye upon diverse facets of modern American culture and life: everything from war and politics to prostitution and menopause. Now she has taken on caregiving—an exploding social phenomenon that currently affects the lives of nearly 50 million American adults.

The call came one day when Sheehy was sitting in a beauty salon. It was about her husband, Clay. It was about cancer. In the ensuing weeks, her life changed radically: “I had a new role. Family caregiver.” Caring for an elder, once-independent adult—whether a parent, life partner, relative or friend—can be a heartbreaking and backbreaking full-time job, and most often one without pay. Sheehy was her husband’s primary caregiver for the last 17 years of his life, a process she believes is a journey that “opens up possibilities for true intimacy and reconnection at the deepest level.”

As we have come to expect from Sheehy, Passages in Caregiving is well and thoroughly researched, and the straight-talking narrative is a blend of trenchant yet sensitive prose, fact, story and strategy. Sheehy writes from her own “raw experience” of caregiving, weaving her personal story throughout, along with the stories of other families. She likens the caregiving journey to navigating the twists in a labyrinth, a device that, unlike the confounding riddle of a maze, “orders chaos.” She names eight major turnings around the labyrinth, from “shock and mobilization” through to “the long goodbye,” illustrates them with moving and apt personal stories, then offers practical resources and empowering strategies for coping with their challenges. There is, Sheehy says, “life after caregiving,” and Passages in Caregiving is a crucial roadmap to that new life.

Since publishing her groundbreaking book Passages in 1976, Gail Sheehy has trained her keen eye upon diverse facets of modern American culture and life: everything from war and politics to prostitution and menopause. Now she has taken on caregiving—an exploding social phenomenon that currently affects the lives of nearly 50 million American adults. The call […]
MemoirLifestylesFamily & RelationshipsAging

A little something for mom

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

What happens to a mother when her husband, her children's father, dies? In Designated Daughter: The Bonus Years with Mom, D.G. Fulford steps in as "the sibling who would try to take up the empty space that had always been filled by Dad." (Fulford's brother is author and former Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene.) Each chapter is co-written by Fulford and her mother, Phyllis; they offer stories that are by turns funny and poignant, and familiar in their glimpses of what it's like to be the surviving spouse or child. They're frank about these "bonus years," and how their changed relationship required some rebalancing—of Fulford's own approach to motherhood, Phyllis' ability to be independent and both women's perspective on what matters and what can be laughed off. Designated Daughter offers a hopeful vision of what mother-daughter relationships can be.

MEMORIES, SUPERBLY WRITTEN
Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers, edited by Kathryn Kysar, contains 21 thoughtful explorations of memory, discovery and the mother-daughter bond. The writing in this collection is superb, thanks to the skill and thoughtfulness of the contributors, which include accomplished novelists, poets, journalists and essayists such as Jonis Agee and Sandra Ben&and#237;tez. There are photos, too, lovely in both their familiarity awkward poses in dress-up clothes, mom-and-baby candids and diversity. Riding Shotgun is an honest, memorable collection worth savoring and sharing.

POWERFUL POETRY
Frances Richey raised her son, Ben, on her own. He grew up to become an Army captain and Green Beret who served two tours in Iraq, secret missions in a war his mother does not support. Writing poetry helped Richey, a former corporate executive who has been a yoga and meditation instructor for the last 15 years, cope with her fear for her son. Her poems in The Warrior: A Mother's Story of a Son at War are powerful in their evocation of the emotional battles fought every day by the people who are left behind, worrying and wondering: "My son is always leaving. / Sometimes he looks back / and waves good-bye. Sometimes / he just disappears." and "It was easy to think of warrior / as a yoga posture, until my son / became a Green Beret." One Mother's Day, Richey didn't hear from Ben; she writes about it in "Incommunicado." But this mother's story has a happy ending: Ben, who first deployed in 2004, returned home in 2006.

A PRESIDENTIAL TRIBUTE TO MOM
Former president Jimmy Carter is no stranger to author-dom: He's written more than 20 books, including An Hour Before Daylight, Our Endangered Values and Beyond the White House. A Remarkable Mother is both a biography of his mother, the indomitable Miss Lillian, and a memoir of his relationship with her over the course of her life (she died in 1983 at age 85). Lillian was born in Georgia, the fourth of nine children. Carter recounts stories of her formative years in the rural South, her work as a nurse during World War I, and her volunteer work for the Peace Corps. It's interesting to read about Miss Lillian's role as "America's first mama": She visited the White House often, accompanied her son on official state missions and "played a key role in [Carter's] crucial support from African Americans." Photos help tell the story of Miss Lillian, who is shown with family and foreign dignitaries alike. She is talking and smiling in nearly every one.

MOMS IN STYLE
Each of us makes choices about our personal style from how we look and the objects we treasure to the career paths we follow. According to fashion and interior designer Carrie McCarthy, and Danielle LaPorte, a writer and communications strategist, identifying and embracing a particular style philosophy can help us be more mindful of and deliberate with our life choices. In their book Style Statement: Live by Your Own Design, they share their own statements and feature portraits of women who embody various style statements; descriptions of characteristics common to those styles; and questions to help readers determine and interpret their own preferences for certain colors, flowers, foods, art forms and the like. Think Color Me Beautiful, but for your life, not just your makeup colors.

From longtime fans who've seen Breakfast at Tiffany's countless times to those who discovered the gorgeous gamine via a Gap commercial, Audrey Hepburn has seemingly endless appeal. What Would Audrey Do? Timeless Lessons for Living with Grace and Style offers advice for emulating the icon's style and approach to life. Author Pamela Keogh gives oversized sunglasses and ballet flats their due, but she goes beyond signature fashion to ponder whether Audrey would have a MySpace page, sit for an interview with Oprah or admit she learned lessons from her strict mother (no, probably, yes). WWAD? offers thought-provoking and fun anecdotes, quizzes and decorating tips, but it also contains plenty of biographical detail. Keogh also describes Audrey's work with UNICEF, for which she served as an ambassador until her death in 1993 at age 63. WWAD? is a well-rounded read for the Audrey aficionado, or anyone who wants to live life with a bit more panache.

GROAN AND BEAR IT
Any woman who's suffered through a mom-induced blind date will find herself laughing—and cringing—in sympathy with the writers who contributed to Have I Got a Guy for You: What Really Happens When Mom Fixes You Up. The essay collection, edited by Alix Strauss (author of the short story collection The Joy of Funerals), contains 26 stories by women who've experienced some rather interesting fix-ups thanks to their well-meaning, but misguided, mothers. Standouts include "Letters to Gelman," about a mom's sudden and complete obsession with the producer of "Live with Regis and Kathie Lee," and "Dentists + Dragons," in which the writer's suitor, a dentist and screenwriter wannabe, drags her to a Dungeons & Dragons convention and presents her with a skimpy costume. There are positive outcomes here, too. One date becomes a good friend; another becomes a husband; and plenty of women emerge from their dates creeped out but wiser.

What happens to a mother when her husband, her children's father, dies? In Designated Daughter: The Bonus Years with Mom, D.G. Fulford steps in as "the sibling who would try to take up the empty space that had always been filled by Dad." (Fulford's brother is author and former Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene.) Each […]
Family & RelationshipsAging

Navigating the ‘new old age’

Review by Linda Stankard

In his new book, A Place Called Canterbury: Tales of the New Old Age in America, Dudley Clendinen, a former national reporter and editorial writer for the New York Times, chronicles the compelling life stories of the residents at a Life Care center in Tampa Bay. Here his mother, some of her closest friends from the Tampa area and other "sundry folk" have come to live out their final years. Clendinen describes their journey as "an exquisitely poignant and gritty and dear kind of odyssey," and he tells their tales with compassion, honesty and humor.

"No generation before has lived so long, accumulated so much, grown so independent in old age," he writes. Nor has a generation like their children, the baby boomers, "ever been as dazzled and daunted and consumed by the apparently endless old age of parents." As Clendinen navigates the unfamiliar territory of Medicaid, medications and medical staff, he learns a great deal about this "New Old Age." For several years, his mother, (a woman, in her prime, of "seductive charm, a charitable heart, steely determination, and canny intent") enjoys a full schedule, living in her upscale apartment at Canterbury, going out to dinner at the Tampa Yacht and Country Club. But after she suffers a stroke, she is moved to the nursing wing for the care she needs. As the years pass and she slips further away from him, Clendinen struggles to stay connected with her, to communicate with her and to do right by her.

He forms close ties with many of the residents, and over time, their remarkable stories emerge. Through these "Canterbury tales," we come to know "survivors of the Great Depression, D-day, the Holocaust, and of the American civil rights struggle." We come to understand their joys and sorrows as their tales take us back to their childhoods, their first loves, marriages and careers, and we are reminded of their incredible sacrifices and strengths. Now their children, the boomers, must be strong as they face caring for aging parents – while not getting any younger themselves.

Linda Stankard is a former activities director at a nursing home.

In his new book, A Place Called Canterbury: Tales of the New Old Age in America, Dudley Clendinen, a former national reporter and editorial writer for the New York Times, chronicles the compelling life stories of the residents at a Life Care center in Tampa Bay. Here his mother, some of her closest friends from […]

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