Artful, lighthearted....Special Exits...

Special Exits is a sweet memoir about a tragic time in any person’s life – taking care of your parents in their final days. Its easy to fall in love with all the characters in this memoir as we see them struggle to help each other, through health and financial problems, with unwavering love for one another.

Despite reliving a difficult time in the author’s life, Joyce Farmer manages to make the ending sweet instead of tragic. With a name like Special Exits and an ending scene where she cuddles the cat who once hated her, I ended up closing the final pages of the book with a smile on my face instead of tears.

The characters are so loveable! I loved reading the comics closely and finding that Farmer had included small jokes like calling the grocery store “Food for More” or Trader Old’s instead of Trader Joes (p56). All those small additions in the illustrations made the book just a little more enjoyable. Joyce Farmer’s sense of humor and light-heartedness made the book fun to read.

Despite the light heartedness, I definitely did feel for the characters. I love how deeply Joyce Farmer brought us into the lives of her parents (even though she wasn’t living in the home with them, I wonder how she knew so much about their daily lives. Were these panels guesses or accurate?). I also found it really honorable that Joyce Farmer decided that the most important parts of her life to share in her own memoir, were her paretnts’ final days (instead of just writing about herself). I have a lot of respect for the author for that. Its easy to feel how much, and how selflessly, she loves her parents.

She touches on a lot of heavy themes about the elderly – ex: old love, fear of doctors/anxiety around examinations, attachment to the home (immobility/inability to go out), feeling like a burden, cycle where old people turn into babies again, loneliness, physical and emotional pain etc., self diagnosing instead of going to a doctor etc.

I used to think that the feeling of being a burden was just something that indian elderly folks felt, or other elderly folks who live in the same homes as their children….but this book was eye-opening for me in that sense. I wonder if elderly people feeling like they become a burden is universal across all cultures? Or is that just for sick people in general?

Some scenes that were really powerful for me (for diff reasons) were p57-59 where Lars is crying because he’s tired of taking care of someone he loves so much. Also p62 where Laura is bathing Rachel…this scene was kinda at the beginning of when Rachel started to lose her mind and Rachel totally looks like a child in this picture with her arms up in the air, excited to be dressed/bathed. It just reminds me of a cycle about how we are born unable to take care of ourselves, and as our bodies age we return to that in old age.

I thought it was a random addition to add the scenes about abortion. I appreciated them but I wasn’t sure where Joyce Farmer was going with these references – Rachel advices Sharalee to get an abortion, Laura and Rachel talk about how abortions are necessary and women should make decisions that have to do with their bodies, and then Sharalee comes back to thank Rachel. I think the abortion issue brings Laura and Rachel closer, but I wonder if there was something else that I wasn’t getting with this thread in the memoir.

I liked the parts where Lars sees death before passing away. I thought that was a really interesting illustration that wouldn’t have been possible in the same way without the graphics that a graphic memoir offers. And then again when Lars sees death in the mirror while changing into his suit. It was just interesting to see what an old persons final thoughts might be, or Joyce’s interpretations of what they might be.

Again in this book, there was no critical analysis of race or representations of minority folks. And this has happened in most of our memoirs so far, but its still a little irritating. I guess not questioning the “dangerous neighborhood” panel with a black kid playing basketball outside (p75) is normal for Joyce Farmer’s memoir. I mean, I guess not everyone’s memoir involves questioning racial stereotypes or degradation. Also, the image about their one black friend “Charles” who they thought would help check up on her parents during the Rodney King riots (and the image of him smiling like he’s of service to any white folks who need his help) was weird for me (p82). But, again, I guess everyone’s memoir doesn’t have to do with racism.

Overall, I did love the memoir because I thought it was a really artful way of depicting a couple’s///someone’s parents last few days of life. It was lighthearted, warm, touching etc. Esp when her and the cat become buddies on the very last page J