sounds depressing but interesting.

I'm so glad I don't have to take care of my mother. And I'm not going to marry an older man with incipient Alzheimer in my late 60s. ( )

this book started very well. It was funny and clever, but then I found myself very angry at the parents who were wasting all their money on 'helpers'. Their 'kids' were running to help them when they clearly weren't going to take help. Meanwhile, the 'help' were stealing and over-charging and enjoying a free lunch while the altzheimer/dementia parents did as they wished.
I couldn't finish the book except by reading ahead. I think that adult children have the right to say 'enough' and bow out. ( )

In this non-fiction account of taking care of her aging mother, Meg Federico has tapped into an experience that more and more people are facing. Over a ten year span of time, Federico faced the nuttiness, the anxiety, the exhaustion, and the sheer terror and heart-break of finally having to parent a parent. Federico acknowledges that for the sake of the story she has minimized her siblings' contributions to her mother and step-father's care and that Addie and Walter were blessed with enough money to live through most of this period of time in their own home under the care of home care aides, unlike many aging folks out there. There are hard truths about aging here but Federico leavens these truths with humor. She doesn't flinch from admitting the toll it took on her, her husband , and her children, to be a long-distance caretaker to two people who not only faced dementia but a litany of other chronic health-care issues as well. Walter started ordering sexual aids through the mail. Addie drank to excess. Both of them waged outright war with certain of their aides. But even at their most bizarre or outrageous, they are, at the end of the day, waging a losing battle against the ravages of time and their children have no choice but to try and conduct them to the end of the war as easily as possible.

This book is both terrible and hilarious. It is well-written and honest. What is very clear throughout all of Federico's dealings with her mother is how much she does what she does out of love and not obligation, even when being there for Addie is its most grueling and difficult. I don't know that we have a choice in how we age, whether we are going to become completely irrascible and cantankerous, or if we will meekly accept what others deem to be in our best interest. Does it depend on our prior dispositions? In Federico's musings on both Addie and Walter's personalities before the ravages of age changed them, we see seeds of the elderly people they become but those seeds were certainly tempered by other aspects of their personalities that seem to have faded under the onslaught of the stronger (and ultimately nuttier) aspects that ruled the last ten years of life. And learning to adjust to and accept these stronger personalities is one of the challenges for a child taking care of her elderly parent. As I read along in this, I couldn't help but laugh, even as I gasped in horror at the indignities incumbent in growing old. There is a card or plaque or bumper sticker out there somewhere that tells us that "Growing Old Isn't For Sissies" and this book certainly supports the sentiment wholeheartedly. In the end, after Addie's death, Federico imagines her response to this difficult and love-filled memoir of the end of life and of the ten year long journey Federico herself took with her mother towards this end. And her imagined response beautifully encapsulates so much of their relationship that it is likely to leave you with a smile on your face and tears shimmering in your eyes. ( )

Meg Federico is a successful journalist, often writing humor pieces for the National Post. She lives in Nova Scotia, Canada and her mother lived in New Jersey. As her mother ages, Federico worries..

" Watching my mother for the past few years had been a lot like watching a blindfolded lady ride a unicycle on a tightrope. You can't take your eyes off her as she wobbles up there completely unaware that she's fifty feet above the ground because she can't see. And if you attempt to point out her peril, she thinks you're trying to ruin her career."

And then it happens - her mother does suffer a serious fall and is comatose in a Florida hospital. A hospital that is under court order to stay open, in a derelict neighbourhood with squalid conditions. Federico flies down, her brother arrives and they try to decide what is the best for their mother.

As they struggle with making decisions and overcoming seemingly unthinkable conditions, we are treated to flashbacks of her mother Addie's life and times.

Addie is married to her second husband Walter, who suffers from Alzheimer's. They both drink too much and neither has been declared incompetent. The solution reached by Meg and her stepsister Cathy (Walter's daughter) is to keep them looked after in their own home - which comes to be known as the Departure Lounge. Although the stories are at times humorous, many times I was saddened and appalled by the situations described. The family is very well off and they end up with eleven paid staff to look after these two confused, elderly people. Staff that ends up stealing, doesn't show up and half the time doesn't seem to care. Although Federico's story and explanation for the decision to keep them at home seems logical in the book, I still can't understand how all their money could not buy competent staffing. Or why the question of legal competency was not pursued more aggressively.

"Competency is complex and so hard to contest that several lawyers cautioned me away from it, advising that even if we won, we'd ruin our relationship with our mother, and things weren't quite bad enough to warrant it. But I'm telling you any judge who spent a weekend at the Departure Lounge would hand over guardianship of both of then to anyone who could walk and chew gum at the same time.

The situation between Walter and Addie had been going on for many years. He is a bully and his behaviour, temper and lust has not improved over the years.

"He certainly bullied my mother and threw tantrums and fits that made her life miserable."

There is no doubt that Federico loves her mother. She leaves her family in Nova Scotia repeatedly to be by her mother's side and loses her job.

"But Addie was my compass north; as long as she was around, I knew where I was, even if I was running in the opposite direction. How would I get my bearings without her?"

Elder care is a difficult subject - what is best for some may not be for others. The cost of care is prohibitive to some - something Federico acknowledges in the preface notes. Although I found the book hard to read at times, I truly appreciate Federico's candor in putting such a personal story to paper. It's a story all of us will face at some point, either for ourselves or a loved one. And it's all too easy to question something when you're not the one living it. ( )