Heartbreaking Exits

I know we are supposed to be objective about what we are reading in this course. Sorry, gang. Couldn't do it with this book. It made me cry.

Joyce Farmer portrayed so much of what I went though for ten years with my mother's deteriorating mind/body health, due in large part to dementia/Alzheimer's and cardiovascular disease. This is my foundation for what I now will impart on this book.

Lars put it well on page 85, in the last panel "...Yes, well - things get worse in such small increments that you can get used to anything."

The house, in disrepair and need of assistance was a perfect simile for what was happening to Lars and Rachel Drover.

That is the pace and tone of her parents' aging, which was a similar pace to my mother's aging. Elders start forgetting, losing abilities long taken for granted. It is embarassing, and Farmer portrayed Lars and Rachel's concern over losing abilities - strength, sight, memory, balance, and so on. Simple things were becoming impossible tasks. Rachel moving to the living room couch reminded me of concessions our elders make in order to stay in their homes. This is their dignity being challenged.

Lars and Laura caring for Rachel was difficult, and the decision to have Rachel placed in convalescent care was well portrayed. Lars could not do this and left it to his daughter to do for him.

However, it seemed that there was little investigation or thought in the facility that Laura had Rachel moved to. Communication breakdowns, Rachel's fall and subsequent discovery of a broken hip, staff not sensitive to her complaints. This troubled me -- there are social service staff at hospitals that will direct an elder patient's family to the proper resources, yet this didn't happen in this instance. The final days were depicted so sad, and there is a great deal of anger I got from Laura when she goes to visit Rachel to find that she had died and already taken to the morgue.

The deterioration of Lars' health was something that, sadly, I am seeing in an older sister's husband who refuses to see a doctor. Unfortunately, I have seen this happen with men of that generation who really believe that they can survive anything. The product of surviving the Great Depression and WWII and Korea.

Let's get to the graphics. Facial expressions pretty much conveyed how the characters were reacting. Eyes wide, eyebrows up, downcast looks, smiles of pleasure or reminiscing......Farmer got these down. The physical deterioration of Lars and Rachel clearly showed the ravages of their aging taking their physical toll. Page 48, Rachel is 240 pounds; later on pages 126 and 130 she is wasting away. Rachel's confusion due to her mind's deterioration shows on her face. Even the smells of the old bedding, soiled clothing were conveyed; too often our society does not want to admit that, yes, aging and old age diseases have their odors that need to be addressed.

Rachel and Lars died without Laura with them. Both my parents died without my being present. Four years ago, I spent two nonstop days at hospice care helping my mother with her exit from this plane to the next. In the weeks before my mother's death, I remember her dreaming, reaching out with two thin arms, trying to hold or grab onto someone. Lars' dream about his mother reminded me of mother's dreams, likely of her twin brother.

My mother was also of Lars and Rachel's generation. She was private and I believe she, like Rachel and Lars, chose to pass away privately without her daughter having to witness it. Both times in the book, I had to stop and cry, this book reawakened mother's passing four years ago.

The text included stories of Rachel and Lars' histories. I remember my mother repeating these stories to me of her history. This is something of value our elders tell us, hoping we will learn something from their lived experiences.

Some things were repetitious -- Rachel asking for her Dr Pepper, requesting the same thing over and over, Lars efforts to deal with his wife's illness, Lars not wanting to see a doctor after Laura asking several times until his fall at home makes it a mandatory visit. Especially Rachel's repeated questions and statements could be viewed as filler or the author not knowing where to take the story. However, this went in perfectly with Rachel's progressing dementia/Alzheimers disease -- and I'm speaking from my own experience now. It is part of the disease. My mother would ask the same thing over and over and over. I would always give her the same answers, knowing that the discussion would come around again. It could be frustrating, and I saw that frustration on Laura's face from time to time. Again, this would have been the perfect opportunity for a social service agent to direct Laura to a geriatric counselor. I had to find one, and it helped me deal with my mother's deteriorating mind.

So much in this book touched my heart, so much in this book mirrored things I experienced as I cared for my mother. Like Rachel, my mother had a sharp mind - she was a force to be reckoned with and ended up needing 24/7 care for all of her needs.

Side note -- too often we focus on the needs of the elder being cared for and put the needs of the caregiver on the back burner. It was refreshing to see Laura being dated by her husband, Art, and seeing her son and Barbara and Nick stepping up to be sure that Laura was getting a break every now and then. Caring for a deteriorating loved-one's health -- whether it is at home or in an assisted living or convalescent facility -- is mentally taxing. Without loving people in one's life to help out, a person can feel lost and overwhelmed.

I need to close this now, reading this (twice) and writing this has affected me. That said, I'll step away from the critique of the memoir to state that this, thus far, has been THE favorite of all the books for this class that I've reaad thus far.