His Oldest Friend: The Story of an Unlikely Bond

Kleinfeld writes of an "unlikely bond" --and one which I found to be so intruiging. The story was truly inspiring and insightful. The author provided realistic glimpses into the two very different worlds inhabited by Elvis and Miss Oliver - and how both of them managed to get along on their own and together. The relationship forged by these two disparate individuals, whose race and age, not to mention their backgrounds, was truly miraculous. I would highly recommend this book, especially to anyone with an elderly person in their lives. It gives great insight into this time of life.

This book was a quick read partly because I couldn't put it down. I expected a sad ending and was pleasantly surprised.

Dominican teenager Elvis Checo is hired by Margaret Oliver's daughter as a companion to the elderly woman. Both the young man and the old woman luck out as each finds their soulmate of sorts. Both are members of groups often ridiculed or ignored by society but they transcend the stereotypes of a hip hop loving impoverished teenage and a 90-something woman living out her final days in a nursing home. Both Elvis and Miss Oliver have their struggles as Elvis deals with the mean streets of his neighborhood and low expectations of a person from his background. Miss Oliver tries to maintain her dignity in a nursing home as other residents goad her or babble in their dementia. The saving grace is that the two have each other as inspiration. There's no big dramatic moment in the book. It's simply a story of two very decent and intelligent people trying to get by in very different worlds day to day. It's a sweet story and one can't help but hope there will be a happy ending for Elvis and a continued dignified existence for Miss Oliver.

"When she met Elvis, she gave him a shy and friendly smile. He gave her a big smile back. But she wondered. What would a teenager want with her --- someone rolling around in a wheelchair, who relished opera, who didn't use a computer, who couldn't even get the infernal remote control to work?...Elvis was thinking something altogether different. He wondered, what would an old woman want with him --- a moody teenager from another part of the world, still trying to decipher girls, who relaxed with video games and rap music, who liked to toss down a few beers with the guys?" This odd couple, introduced to us by award-winning reporter Sonny Kleinfeld, found in each other a kinship that is rare in the easiest of circumstances, and would appear an almost impossible bond in their situation. Elvis Checo, a Dominican teen recently abandoned by his mother, needed a summer job. He heard about relatively easy work at the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The work was not onerous, and despite several tempestuous upheavals in his young life, Elvis stuck with it. Then one day he was approached by the daughter of one of the residents, Margaret Oliver, a nonagenarian who needed more companionship, more stimulation than the Home could supply. Margaret had made a conscious decision, for she was still quite lucid, that she wanted to un-burden her daughter by moving into a nursing home where at least she would see people and remain active. The reality was not what she had imagined: "the dayroom was a chaos of women in wheelchairs, most of them inert, emaciated, cruelly smitten by the punishments of age..." There were rows of such denizens, who sat without speaking, or raged against unseen enemies, or traded gossip and shamelessly slandered their neighbors in an atmosphere too cold for the warm-hearted, gregarious Margaret. Margaret learned to treat the staff respectfully and to ignore most of her fellow residents, gulping her meals quickly so as to avoid much contact with the mute and the mad (most residents over the age of 80 had dementia). Elvis, a bright, generous boy looking for a role model, found in Margaret a soul-mate. They helped each other. He came to solicit her advice, and to confide in her and she in him. His three hours a week stretched to garden wheelchair rambles and surprise visits. They traded jokes. He cheered her up when bad things happened, like when her new phone was stolen. She listened to his poetry and took it seriously. It was a relationship that transcended age, race, culture, and conventional notions of what friendship comprises. HIS OLDEST FRIEND is inspirational without being even slightly sentimental. The prose is straightforward; the story, which could be maudlin if told by a less skilled craftsman, never lapses into pathos. When the book ends, the story does not. Margaret and Elvis are still alive and kicking, philosophizing and kidding around. They go to a free concert at Lincoln Center