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.
E-Book Content
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