Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

Spanning the last several years of the author's parent's lives and told through a mixture of cartoons, family photos, and documents, this memoir aims to provide both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. When it came to her elderly mother and father, the author held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when her mother climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the "crazy closet" - with predictable results - the tools that had served the author well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and early nineties could no longer be deployed. While the particulars are specific in their idiosyncrasies - an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined the author for decades - the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care.-- Adapted from publisher's description.