An Uncertain Inheritance: Writers on Caring for Family

All of us at some point in our lives will need to confront the issues written about in this eloquent collection -- whether it's our parents, our spouses, our siblings, our friends, or even ourselves. The writers here tackle the subject with intimacy, poignancy, grace...and a great amount of courage. There are stand-outs for me in this collection: the writer Helen Schulman asking her father, "We all love you, we still have fun together, we still can enjoy one another, does any of that help at all?" Her father's reply: "No, you and your love don't help me." As a daughter myself trying to tackle my mother's depression after my father's death, this line really resonated. Then there's Eleanor Cooney's remarkable essay, "Death in Slow Motion", about her mother's descend into Altzheimer's disease and the toll it takes on her -- unflinchingly real, not at all flowery, straightforward and raw. Or Ann Hood's essay "In The Land of Little Girls", about the death of her five-year-old daughter...which broke my heart by the courage it took to go back to those emotions and write it so perfectly. And Amanda Fortini's "The Vital Role" about her own debilitating tropical illness and her symbiotic relationship with her caregiver: "a story that arose from a perfect confluence of needs: one person's desperate need to be cared for and another's equally urgent need to care." I could go on and on about these gems, all focusing on the most elemental of needs -- connection, intimacy, loss, courage. This is an important book, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

As a writer and sole caregiver for my 84-year-old mother who has Alzheimer's, "An Uncertain Inheritance: Writer's on Caring for Family," edited by Nell Casey piqued my interest. Writers wrote the 19 essays gathered for this book, but more importantly, these essays were written by caregivers and those being cared for themselves with a no-holds-barred brutal honesty. Under my currant circumstances, I thought this book might bring me to tears with each story, but I was wrong. It's that powerful honesty written eloquently in all its vulnerability that will grab your heart, reduce you to tears, cause you to chuckle, and in some cases infuriate you, as it did me. These stories weren't fiction fantasies or pretty pictures of caregivers being selfless martyrs, as some may think, and the patients weren't patiently waiting to die; these were true accounts of people--parents, children, spouses, friends, and siblings--who while living life, being all they could be, were stricken with illness or injury and needed help. Caregiving for the chronically or critically ill is not a pretty subject. These writers opened their homes, hearts, and minds and let out every ounce of love, fear, frustration, and anger and shared the trials and tribulations they felt during their caregiving journey. Each essay had its own merits, story, and sense of need. Helen Schuman in her essay, "My Father the Garbage Head," writes with poignant, heartwarming honesty of her father's heart attack and strokes which led to his death. Sam Lipsyte, in "The Gift" speaks openly and humorously about his drug abuse, how it wrecked his life, and while he "cleaned up his act" his mother let him move back in. Shortly after, his mother tells him and his sister that her breast cancer had recurred. He handled the news with a matter-of-fact acceptance that he would be her caregiver. Ann Harleman's "My Other Husband" describes her husband's illness and the grueling bleakness and burden of MS. Her heartfelt love showed in each of the slices of their life she describes before MS took over. Her friend told her, "With chronic illness, a lot of times the caregiver ends up dying first. Out of stress and exhaustion. I've seen it." After years, frustrated and worn, she finally decided to place him in a nursing home "for his sake and hers." Eleanor Cooney's essay "Death in Slow Motion" was formed from a former Harper's Magazine article and later became a book under the same name. The eloquently written story is about her mother, writer Mary Draper, and her decline with Alzheimer's Disease. Cooney shoots from the hip with her openness of dealing with Alzheimer's and the dilemmas and life interruptions her and her mate dealt with after moving her mother into an apartment close to their home. After just a few short months of her mother's arrival, Cooney find herself in an argument with her mate, who bolts out of the house to clear the air, and she stands in the dark with her "heart pounding

As someone with a parent with a terminal illness this book was of great comfort for me. I felt as though others knew my private thoughts and had the nerve to write them down. This books means so much and I would recommend to anyone who is caring for someone else, being cared for or is in the midst of losing someone they love.

Having a mother whose dementia led her to be infinitely repeating memories from long ago, I was touched and comforted by Ann Harleman's tale of caring for her husband juxtaposed against her early memories of dancing naked with him in the woods. My Mom's recurring memories were of her father's kindness in driving her to school as a child, or of coming back to a beloved vacation home and finding it empty and the windows open. Nell Casey's book brings out our complex compassion and chagrin at finding a beloved family member's mind increasingly empty. Thank you, Nell, and her wonderful contributing authors.

I picked this book up out of curiosity, wondering if it would be helpful for caregivers, which it is, but more than that it contains wonderfully written stories that kept me reading just because they were well told and full of insight. Along the way they provide insights into how hard it can be to be cared for, even if you desperately need to be, and how specifically difficult it can be to care for different kinds of health problems--and yet, often, how rewarding. A very human collection and one I think all health professionals, including all medical and nursing students, should read. A very good read, and now I shall look for Nell Casey's anthology on depression.