Special Exits by Joyce Farmer, very tenderly and painstakingly depicts the slow demise of an elderly couple as seen through the eyes of the man's only daughter, Laura.
  Beside the beautifully rendered, album-like illustrated cast on the first page following the title page, the character that we are first introduced to is the cat. He's seen menacing an old cardboard box, chunks flying. The next frame shows the cat, belly up, getting rubbed on a large checkered lap. Laura enters and asks how they are and the father answers, "I'm beautiful". Within 6 short illustrations, the author has dropped us right in the midst of this family, and we love them. Like the cat, we are belly up, trusting, by the first half of page one. The parents are portrayed in lively line drawing in which they are shown being actively engaged in conversation, making eye contact, and doing small tasks for themselves. The story opens during the last few months of their independence, displaying them to the reader fairly whole, allowing the reader to get to know them before they slowly begin to drift away.
    By the bottom of page, the Rachel is shown, flung out on the couch with her arm across her head, with a terrible headache. It doesn't take Farmer long to start putting her story in to gear. She wastes no time in setting up her tale. The dialogue, 
"--I took you to the doctor last week, Rachel. Why didn't you ask him for medicine then?
--That was my EYE doctor, Lars."
The situation is not good. Already Lars is showing a lack of attention that seems worrisome to Rachel's health.  Farmer's intro places the reader at the crux of the dilemma without having wasted any breath. These two sweet, funny, little old people are about to make some grave self-care mistakes. And we don't want to see them fail. They have immediately become our grandparents, our parents. 
    Farmer's detailed account of their experiences is painful to read at many points. The story, before being told, is already familiar: distrust of outsiders and doctors, fierce independence, waning abilities, and stubbornness. The house and garage are full of garbage, they eat poorly, and clearly need more help than Laura can offer.The author pointedly draws the items in their shopping cart: potato chips, "Hormel Slips Ahoy", excedrin extra strength, TV dinners, milk, cheese, butter, and two hams. No vegetables. Nothing nourishing. She has very slyly exposed them to us, as stoic as they seem. 
    As they get more and more dependent on outside care, the Laurie character is forced to spend more and more time at their house cooking, cleaning, reorganizing, and bathing them. She takes days off of work and time away from her husband, Art. I thought that it was a very elegant and old fashioned choice not to get into the private details of how this extra care was affecting her relationship. Surely all the time apart and financial strain had its toll, but we are never privy to any details of the sort. Similarly, Farmer doesn't feel the need to depict her father and step mother's relationship in a negative way, either. She allows Rachel to expose the sad homecoming when she found her predecessor's nighties and slips still filling the bedroom drawers, but the encounter isn't hostile or angry. They mourn for the woman she was, all those years ago, but they don't seem to hold it against him or inflate his bad deeds. Their relationship is realistic; it has flaws, but their many years together have also been full of care and tenderness. The real gravity of the story does not need to be dressed up in unnecessary drama.
  When the parents really start to go, Farmer depicts the scenes with a great, loving sense of humor. The first panel that I really noticed that Rachel was far out at sea was on the bottom of page 131, she is pictured alone at the far left, hair like hay, eyes deep coal pits, shoulders awkwardly hitched. She looks scary. Farmer makes sure to show her full body in the next few frames, reinforcing her illness by showing her gaunt, nude body and shot of her pulling her breasts out in front of her and waggling them in a goofy, shameless, playful way much in antipathy to her old-fashioned Christian personality. She has clearly lost hold of her former sense of self and lives now only in the moment, like a very young child.
    In the last scene, Laura has adopted the dreaded cat, Ching, who has always attacked and frightened her. She lets it outside to fend for itself, where it soon learns to be on its guard, after being attacked by the neighboring dog. This difficult experience has somehow humbled the cat-- he begins to show affection towards Laura and she cries out to her father's ghost, "Dad! Dad! Can you see this?" he cat's experience is, by this scene, made as relevant as all the people's... He, too, underwent a long hardship and a huge life change and managed to come out on the right side, happy, humbled, and at peace, as did Laura.