Can't we talk about something more pleasant? / Roz Chast

Introduction -- Beginning of the end -- Return to the fold -- Elder lawyer -- Galapagos -- Fall -- Maimonides -- Sundowning -- End of an era -- Move -- Old apartment -- Place -- Next step -- Kleenex abounding -- Postmortem -- Elizabeth, alone -- Bedtime stories -- Chrysalis -- End -- Epilogue.

In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through a mixture of cartoons, family photos, documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the "crazy closet" - with predictable results - the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed. While the particulars are Chast-ian 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 Roz 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.

English