Letters to Harry: A True Story of a Daughter's Love and a Mother's Final Journey

Collection of letters the author wrote to her best friend Harry during the last year of her mother's life... I think this book would be a great help for anyone in a similiar situation -- the author puts into words many of the emotions both sides go through (anger, fear, confusion, frustration, sadness, hope, apathy, etc.) and helps the reader understand the progression through the phases of death and how each one can make one feel. While I'm not a caretaker for a dying mother (let's not even think about that right now), I saw a lot in the dying mother of this book that I also see in my 90+ year old great aunt. Reading this book helped me better understand her anger and frustrations, something I think will help our relationship greatly over the remaining years of her life. Recommended to anyone looking for some help with this kind of thing.

LETTERS TO HARRY arrived on Tuesday. But for pressing commitments, I would have concluded it in one sitting, rather than just this past Friday, so thirsty was I for the next word, page, "letter."The beauty of your words flow with the determination of the rivers you so applaud, with the ease of monarch winging from orchid to tulip, and with the effortlessness of snow falling on mountaintops you so eloquently depict. The syntax makes the reading as effortless as breathing and the depth of soul penetration and spirit approach is akin to rebirth.I took myself to the mountaintops in the Cascades, and witnessed, in quiet stillness, the majesty, the grandeur, the splendor, and the indescribable magnificence of nature's display in the northwest United States. What a joy to relive that calming retreat through the dazzling presentation of your homestead; enhanced by the historical account you included. Beyond and beneath the radiance and warmth of your writing, the enlightenment regarding our environmental challenge, the personalization of your journey, I found "my story" - the one I could never have so brilliantly captured and conveyed. You related the sojourn toward letting go of a loved one that I now travel, as if writing at my dictation. How did you know, except for angelic hosts attending your recording of these events of love's story?I shall hurry to provide copies of LETTERS TO HARRY to family members and friends in "grief recovery;" who, like me, will, I suspect, find themselves, and their own personal sojourn, leaping from the pages of the love story you have penned. THANK YOU, JANET!

My mom has lung cancer, so I could relate to this book very well. Anyone who knows someone with cancer should read this. What a well written, detailed, compassionate book. Up until this book I was unable to locate anything like it. As far as I am concerned, it rates a ten! The reading is smooth, honest and really deals with the emotions that arise when dealing with cancer, for all those involved. I have passed it onto my moms oncologist counselor in order to help others in similar situations.

Letters To Harry is a beautifully committed story of a woman's struggle to be true and good in the face of her mother's suffering and death from breast cancer. Janet Farrington Graham gives voice to our deepest fears and our greatest strengths. Her prose sings.

A should read for those with aging parents -- and more so for the parents