Heard this author interviewed on middle of the night radio (Joey Reynolds, also a Buffalonian) and was interested for a couple reasons. He teaches at Brooklyn College, where Scott Lindenbaum went and now teaches. Figured they might know each other. Second, of course, the Buffalo connection. So, when I walked into the library, looking for something else, and found this book, I grabbed it. And it grabbed me from the start.
Deals with a young man's grappling with his mom's early dementia. She is only 56 and in a home, no longer able to live in the world. She was a bright, successful and independent woman, a nurse, who started slipping. As a nurse, she wrote about her advocacy for euthanasia in cases like hers, but no one documented or talked about it with her when SHE became the one in question.
Anyway, it's a very touching and personal story; I couldn't help wondering how much was based on truth. The writing is great.
Here are a couple passages I love:
"Four twenty-one a.m. I don't think I'll ever get to sleep tonight.
But at four thirty or so, I drift off to sleep and remain free of torment, free of suffering for almost an hour. Yet just before the sun rises, I hear them gathering again in my mind, those immaculate words spooling out...trailing multicolored threads. Mother, euthanasia, death, Brooklyn, snow."
And another:
"An old philosophy teacher of mine used to say: 'If you've got one foot in the past and one foot in the future, you're pissing on the present.' He was often drunk, but his message was sound. He stressed learning how to experience a moment. He talked about being present. Sounds easy until you actually try to do it."
Anyway, this book made me sad, and it made me think and it made me want to make my feelings very clear for my children so they don't ever have to go through what the main character in this book did. I need to make my living will.
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