E-Book Overview
Thirty million people today care for ailing family members in their own homes—a number that will increase dramatically over the next decade as baby boomers enter old age, as soldiers return home from war mentally and physically wounded, as medical advances extend lives and health insurance fails to cover them. Offering both companionship and guidance to the people who find themselves caring for their intimates, An Uncertain Inheritance is a collection of essays from some of the country's most accomplished writers. Poignant, honest, sometimes heartbreaking, often wry, and funny, here is a book that examines caregiving from every angle, revealing the pain, intimacy, and grace inherent in this meaningful relationship.
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an uncertain inher itance WRITERS ON CARING FOR FAMILY n EDITED BY FOREWORD BY NELL CASEY FRANK MCCOURT contents FRANK MCCOURT NELL CASEY HELEN SCHULMAN SAM LIPSYTE ANN HARLEMAN JEROME GROOPMAN JULIA ALVAREZ Foreword v Introduction ix My Father the Garbage Head 1 The Gift 12 My Other Husband 19 Elliott 34 Caring Across Borders: Aging Parents in 66 Another Country Called Them Vitamins 77 JUSTINE PICARDIE Ruth 88 ANDREW SOLOMON Notes on Accepting Care 94 STEPHEN YADZINSKI ANNE LANDSMAN ELEANOR COONEY ED BOK LEE SUSAN LEHMAN ANN HOOD AMANDA FORTINI The Baby 102 Death in Slow Motion 118 Mourning in Altaic 146 Don’t Worry. It’s Not an Emergency. 164 In the Land of Little Girls 175 The Vital Role 188 CONTENTS iv SCOT SEA ABIGAIL THOMAS STAN MACK KERREL MCKAY JULIA GLASS Planet Autism 208 The Day the World Split Open 219 The Elephant in the Room 228 Transformed by a Touch 245 The Animal Game; or, How I Learned to Take Care of Myself by Letting Others Care for Me 252 Contributors 271 Acknowledgments 279 Permissions 281 About the Auther Other Books by Nell Casey Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher foreword T he telegram was addressed to someone at “The Hospice for the Dying.” I suppose I should have felt a chill when I looked at that envelope and realized I’d be delivering that telegram. Instead, I felt merely curious. The hospice was somewhere on the edge of my town, Limerick, and I wondered if I’d see anyone dying. A man at the gate told me to go up to the front door and if I met anyone I was not to talk to them. “Are you listening? Talk to nobody.” I promised I wouldn’t say a word, but I rode my bike slowly in hopes of seeing dying people. There were some old men on benches chatting and smoking pipes, and they looked too lively to be dying. A man answered my knock at the front door. Because this was a church institution, I knew there would be no tip. That freed me to ask, “Are those old men out there dying, sir?” I thought he was going to hit me. “Get out of here, you little twerp, or I’ll give you a good fong in your arse.” A few days later I had telegrams for the Limerick Lunatic Asylum, which sits strategically next to the Limerick Jail, beyond which is the St. Lawrence’s Cemetery. Beside the jail there was a pub and, across the street, a hospital. All very convenient. Eventually, there were telegrams for the jail, but I was unable to see the prisoners. I climbed a wall to see if there were any “lunatics” walking around the yard of the asylum, and I was delighted when some spotted vi