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After several months of waiting, my turn for Roz Chast’s graphic memoir Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? finally came round. It was worth the wait.
You may already know what it is about. Chast’s parents were aging and she tried several times to talk to them about what they would want to do if something happened. Of course no one likes to think or talk about these sorts of things and trying to talk to your parents about it, especially when they don’t want to talk about it, is no easy thing. So Chast’s attempts went nowhere. And her parents continued to age and everything was fine until it wasn’t.
In their early 90s and becoming more frail, unable to keep the apartment clean and relying on a friendly neighbor to pick up things from the grocery store for them, it was only a matter of time before something happened. The call came at midnight. Chast’s mom had fallen while trying to stand on a ladder to change a light bulb. The fall had actually happened a few days before and she refused to go to the doctor. Nothing a little bed rest couldn’t fix. Until she couldn’t get out of bed. While Chast’s mom spent a few days at the hospital she had her father stay with her and her family. It was then she noticed her dad’s mental acuity was nowhere near what she thought it was. Her mom had been taking care of him and covering up just how bad he had gotten.
Thankfully, her mom was not seriously injured. But it was the beginning of the long decline. After more incidents Chast managed to convince her parents that they needed to move into assisted living. It was a nice facility where they had their own apartment and Chast, her husband and kids were nearby and could visit them frequently. Still, the parents did not go willingly.
The memoir is well told with humor and compassion. The art is cartoon-y but expressive. Chast’s story is the story of so many others that it is no surprise really why the book is so popular. I have family members who have had to take care of their aging parents. I have friends who are in the midst of taking care of theirs. It is not easy and our society doesn’t help make it any easier. Care facilities cost astronomical sums of money. Chast’s parents had scrimped and saved their entire lives and it only took a couple of years before they had nearly run through all their savings. Is that what we work all our lives to save for? Not retirement, but to pay for decent end-of-life care? And what happens when the money runs out? What happens if you have no one like Chast to look out for your best interests when you are not able to? It’s a scary prospect.
Growing old sucks. But the thing is, I don’t believe it has to. I don’t know how to change society and culture so that the golden years truly are golden right up to the last breath. But it is definitely something that needs to change.
We all should read this book and open our eyes.
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booksandbuttons, most definitely! And the experience of Chast and her parents isn’t even a horrific one but very normal.
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I worked for a nursing home for a couple of years a it really opened my eyes about healthcare and long term care. It is frightening and it’s sad that it has to be that way. I am with you something has to change. I do have this book out from my library and really want to read it but I think it’s due back soon and I don’t know if I’ll get to it.
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Iliana, even really nice nursing homes are sad places. It must have been really hard working in one. The book reads really fast, you can read it in a couple hours 🙂
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My mother is living in a retirement home she and my dad picked out a couple of years before he died. The idea was that they could go to assisted living and nursing home care if they needed it. The reality is that they all live in dread of the nursing home wing, and will not move to assisted living because it’s another step closer. The staff are nice enough, but they have a tendency to treat the old people like children.
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Jeanne, I don’t blame your parents. It isn’t just having to look at your own mortality but there is so much dignity lost and as you observe, there is a horrible tendency to treat old people like children. How humiliating that must feel.
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you are right… i agree..the would be golden age has turned hectic that some parents even pray not to age. m out of words
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lunkuse, we all imagine that when we get old we will be vigorous and then suddenly collapse and die. But it rarely happens like that and I can’t blame anybody for dreading aging.
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I don’t know if I could read this. Too close to home. When she was 89, I had to move my mother from her house into mine. She will turn 95 this year. I envisioned coming home and sitting down to the dinner table. Having a good meal together. Talking about politics (she was a news hound all her life). It didn’t turn out that way. Dementia does not get better. Although she doesn’t wander, can take care of her physical needs, can maneuver the stairs, is in excellent physical health, I’ve had to pull all the knobs off the stove after coming home one day to find the oven on with the door wide open and set to 500. She thought it was too cold in the house. She is up and down all day and night,not sleeping more than a couple hours at a time. I’ve been awakened more than once at 3 a.m. with the query: “Isn’t there any coffee”? Sometimes I break down and cry. And then I pull myself together because she wants to live “at home” – her home, my home, it doesn’t matter. And that’s the way it will be as long as possible. It is I who cannot stand the thought of my parent living with strangers. And yet, if I could do it without occassional resentment, or wondering when the time will come when I can relax and totally enjoy not only my home but my privacy, I’d be a saint. I’m afraid there will be no St. Grad canonized any time soon. Golden Schmolden. Are there any such years?
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Having started with caregivers in his home, then a move to a wonderful assisted living for dementia patients (he thought he was at a hotel), to the sadder version with a doctor on call for my father–the Golden Years become tough ones when health and mental issues combine.
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jenclair, it sounds like you have found a good place for your father. No, the golden years aren’t so golden when health and mental issues come into the picture.
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Oh Grad, what a hard thing! I do think you’re a saint. I would not be able to do what you are doing.
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My dog Oscar is a therapy dog which means he and I got to roam the halls (look for cats) and make the best of friends with the residents of a wonderful place with the subtitle “Home for the Aged” – I wish I could get on the waiting list. The staff and culture/activities and facilities are representative of what a great nursing home can be.
It never is easy to decline in mind or body but I do know and must believe that there are good places that care in all the way that the word ‘care’ should mean. The trick is to find and be able to afford?
I have wanted to read this book since I’ve heard about it. Great review.
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Care, how cool your dog is a therapy dog! It sounds like you volunteer at a wonderful place. I am sure the residents love it when you and Oscar visit. My maternal grandmother was in a nursing home for a number of years after a major stroke and they had a dog that lived there all the time. The residents loved her so much they often got in trouble for saving treats from their meals for the dog. Finding and affording the good places is no easy thing. I hope you like the book when you get a chance to read it.
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So many of us have the same story. Mine is that my amazing mother got dementia and lived in a nursing home for the last six years of her life. Quickly, she lost the ability to speak, but the last thing she said to me before that happened was ‘Will this never end?’ Watching someone you love and respect become vastly diminished is hell. There is no mercy for some.
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Oh Joan, I am so sorry about your mother. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been.
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My parents – one 85 the other 94 – have been pretty sensible about managing their raging, have made a Living Will or Advanced Care Directive (whatever they are now called), but I was disappointed to discover recently that having put their name down for a retirement village (that provides for transition to assisted living) they said no. It was my father, as my mother would have gone she tells me. Their current house is pretty easy but it has a large garden, and it will be hard when one dies. Mum says she won’t stay there if Dad dies first. Just too big for her to manage and worry about. Oh well, it’s easy to say now what you SHOULD do, a different thing when you have to make the decision yourself. My father has decided that we won’t renew his licence when he turns 95 next month. He can still drive but rarely does. I think it’s a good decision.
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whisperinggums, your wonderful parents are proof about how hard it is to transition even when you are sensible. I always think when I am old and need help I will admit it and not be insensible about it, but really, who am I kidding? At least your parents are healthy and managing where they are. That’s worth a lot!
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Yes, I plan to be sensible too! But, hmmm, I can see how hard it is. Being a it extroverted I think I won’t mind moving into a more community atmosphere when mobility becomes an issue, but who knows.
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we say now we will be sensible but when the time comes? I hope we remain sensible. I guess we’ll find out eventually!
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I am one of those who believe that seventy is the new sixty, eighty is the new seventy, and so on. But at some point the decline begins even in these modern times.
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Anokatony, I agree with you. Both my in-laws are in their early 80s and still chugging along and always busy doing something. But yes, at some point the decline begins and there isn’t anything that can be done to change that.
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I admired how humorous Chast was able to make her parents’ situation — it was awful, but there were so many parts that made me laugh out loud. My mother and I have started saying “YOU’RE A GENIUS ELIZABETH” any time somebody makes a relatively obvious suggestion, and it always makes us giggle.
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Jenny, I think you have to find the humor otherwise it gets to be just too hard. Funny story about you and your mom!
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I would like to read this. It’s great how much attention this book has gotten, because it’s an issue that we’ll all have to face and we need to be talking about it, as a society, not just as individuals. Watching my grandmother’s last couple of years really opened up my eyes to the hardships of aging parents and where to put them – and how to afford it? There are so many people in this country who are paycheck to paycheck – what’s going to happen to them when they all get older?
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laila, I think it’s good too this book has gotten so much attention. You are right it isn’t just a personal or family issue, it is a societal issue too and something that needs to be addressed on many different levels.
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This seems like one of those extremely human but sensitive subject. In my country, 90% of the old folks live with their kids, that how families are and thats how families believe it will work. There is a lot to be said about young kids having grandparents at home when their own parents are out try to make money for the everybody’s future. Sure there is a financial aspect, but atleast the life time savings of the old folks is being used in the family and there care is done my near ones. of course this model has it cons – parents continue to dominate their childern’s lives well into the latter’s adulthood which at times stunts individuality. Then there are people who exploit their parents for their wealth. But still i think the success rate of this model is way higher and better. I myself who had to take care of an ailing mum albeit for a very brief period, and though only 65 and was already in coma, I knew that intrinsically, she preferred spending her last days with me, with objects and people she cherished before she passed away! But there are economic and social factors to this model, but whatever might be the end solution, I completely agree with you that growing old should not be scary!
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cirtnecce, that is really great you were able to take care of your mom like you did. It doesn’t always work out as well as your experience did unfortunately. I have a friend who moved with her husband and two kids into her mom’s house to take care of her and my friend and her husband are now getting divorced because caring for her mom took too much work and placed too much stress on their marriage. When my mother’s mom had to go to a nursing home she needed 24/7 nursing care. There is no way she could have moved in with us, there was no room for her, both my parents were working full time and my grandma was in a wheelchair and the house had stairs. While keeping ageing parents within a family might be ideal, it’s not always workable so there needs to be good alternative places that provide not only care but a good home as well without requiring anyone to be a millionaire.
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I liked this but I think my expectations were out of whack. A few years back I read Sarah Leavitt’s Tangles (also a graphic memoir, about her relationship with her mom’s descent into Alzheimers) and although it felt a little more fragmented and was much slimmer, it really touched me, and I think, unwittingly, set a bar for what I thought I would find in Chast’s memoir, and obviously they are two different people, two different artists (unfair on my part, to expect otherwise, I know).
As for a book which might serve as a lovely companion for either of these memoirs, And the birds rained down, by Joceyne Saucier (translated by Rhonda Mullins) is one of my favourite reads for this year, not only because it leaves readers with quite the opposite feelings that one has at the end of Chast’s and Leavitt’s works. Your last paragraph here convinces me that you would truly appreciate her ideas, and it might be just the kind of story one needs after one like this.
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buriedinprint, it sounds like Tangles must have been really good. Thank for the recommendation of Saucier. I have not heard about that book. I will definitely look for it since this is a topic I have been thinking about lately.
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