No More Words: A Journal of My Mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh

This is a touching memoir of the time when Reeve Lindbergh was helping to take care of her aging mother, the famous Anne Morrow Lindbergh in the last year(s) of her life. This book is a look inside the private lives of a very well known family during a difficult transition in their lives. The story is about how Reeve is trying to make sense of this time. It contains her thoughts and reflections and fears about the change in her mother's condition. I appreciate the honesty in which this book is written, I feel like the author held nothing back in relating her story. I was surprised and delighted at the openness of it. She wrote about things in dealing with this situation that people think, but would rarely admit to. I found this book to be very comforting, as I recently experienced a similar situation in my own family. There were so many times, as I read this, I was shaking my head thinking....I know exactly what you're saying. Throughout the ordeal, there are sad times, but there were also light and funny times as well. Dealing with the aging and decline of a loved one that you have known so well all of your life is difficult. They change, and when it happens, we don't always know how to deal with it or what to think, and we wonder what they are thinking. It's hard and it's confusing when you are trying to guess at what is going on in their world. Reeve writes beautifully about it all. I had not picked this book with the intention of experiencing what I did...the comfort of reading about someone else going through a similar situation as me. I initially picked this book because I love Anne Morrow Lindbergh's book 'Gift of the Sea' and I wanted to read more about her life. Once again, as I am a firm believer of...the right books come along at just the precise moment that we need them and so often they come in an unexpected way as this one did for me.

This is a fast reading book concerning Mrs. Charles Lindbergh's last few years of life. Written by youngest Lindbergh sibling, Reeve, she tells of living on her own farm in Vermont, with a smaller house on the property her mother lived in during that time. Reeve Lindbergh is a wonderful writer - she doesn't need the famous last name to prove that. When she isn't writing about her mother, which is riveting for some reason, her writing of anything else in the book has such a fresh, emotional spirit behind her words. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a legend in her own time both in flying, her husband, and her many published works, did not talk much in her last years. It is a story of how the family felt and coped with her condition, letting go of the vibrant mother they once knew. An excellent book for those who have been a caregiver to a parent or sibling. Anne M.L. was such a famous figure, it was both interesting and heartwrenching to have the privilege of reading about her day to day living. Thank you, Reeve Lindbergh, for sharing this story that you could have kept to yourself, but chose to share. It's a book that will be remembered long after it's read.

I was enchanted by "Gifts from the Sea," by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. While reading "No More Words," I could not tell the difference between mother and daughter's writing. Each has the gift of attentive observation, along with the ability to put these observations into words that had me shaking my head with their frankness. Reeve's observations about her mother's deteriorating health were imbued with such love and devotion. She spoke truthfully and without guile of her wish that her mother meet her end soon, not just for her mother but for her, and her family. Yes, Anne Morrow was indeed fortunate, as Reeve pointed out, to be able to afford excellent, around the clock care in her own home. It made me wonder why this level of care isn't available to anyone who would need it, regardless of their income. It gave Anne Morrow's last years a sense of dignity that most of our elderly will never experience. I wondered what the point of this book really was - and then realized that it didn't need one, to be enjoyed.

I led the discussion on GIFT FROM THE SEA at our book club this fall and became engrossed in the diaries of Anne Morrow Lindbergh. What a pleasant experience to discover and read NO MORE WORDS by Reeve Lindbergh. She writes with the same sensitivity and personal insight as her mother. Reeve's relationship with her mother during the final days of Anne's life, reveals the frustrations and the joys of a family caregiver. Her book is a "gift" to all who are or may find themselves in a similar situation.

I had the opportunity to meet Reeve Lindbergh last week at an author event at our local bookstore - she read excerpts of this book and spoke with great joy and humor about her relationship with her mother (and father) despite the difficult few years before her mother's death. This book is a MUST READ for anyone who felt a personal connection with Anne Morrow Lindbergh through her published diaries and letters, or other books.This is NOT a bedpans, nurses, feeding tubes story filled with morose details about the decline of an aging parent, rather a tender, bittersweet, and often humorous recollection of a much-loved mother and the impact of her life and death upon her daughter and those who surrounded her in her final months and days.Having adored Anne Morrow Lindbergh's writing, and felt a deep personal connection with her through that writing, this book helped to bring a sort of closure to me. Thank you, Reeve, for sharing your deeply personal reflections of the final chapter of your mother's life.