Looking After: A Son's Memoir

A gem. Admirably written and consistently fascinating, it's not for someone who's looking for a set of symptoms, or an account of all the ways an Alzheimer's patient can make things difficult. Instead, it's a nuanced portrait of a woman who led an idiosyncratic and dramatic life, followed by a typical--yet entirely particular--slide into dementia. I've read many Alzheimer's memoirs, and John Daniel's observations and emotions are often as familiar to me as the back of my hand. But I light up to see things put so deftly: "You don't get a second chance to live your mother's last years. She dies and it all freezes in place, everything you did and didn't do. I wish I could have been more patient with her, more supple, more willing to follow her lead instead of so often imposing my own will." Regret. What history of Alzheimer's comes without it? The patient is often anguished in some way, and the caretaker cannot avoid regret about the care he's given. But Daniel reaches behind the confines of his mother's hard last years. "My mother did not get cheated," he writes. "She wore her body down, played it out, scoured it away with living. Maybe she did end her life on purpose. And maybe she did it not because she felt unwanted, not because of anything I did or didn't do, but because the boat was failing her, and like the stream singing in darkness, she wanted to go on." This is a book worth a close slow reading, and a story that will stay with you.

"Looking After: A Son's Memoir" is as loving a tribute as I can imagine. It is a blend of joy and sorrow as Mr. Daniel's remembers and shares his caring for his dying mother. I have mentioned this book to friends who have also cared for dying parents and each person to whom I gave the book found in it a companion. It is a wise and honest book. As the pages progress, I had the sense that Mr. Daniels was growing more clear as to who his mother was, and in doing so loved her all the more. He lets her go at the end, with gratitude for a life well lived.