Final Gifts: Understanding the special awareness, needs, and communications of the dying, by Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley.

In the past 2-1/2 years I have read many books about caregiving and aging as I travel this path with my mother. This isn’t my favorite read, but it’s the only one I’ve read on the topic. I feel somehow better prepared for when my mother’s last days come. Prepared to listen for clues: is she afraid of something? have unfinished business? looking for information? And to ask and answer questions I might not even have realized she is asking.

Hospice nurses, Callahan and Kelley, share intimate experiences with patients at the end of life and their families. “Through their stories we come to appreciate the near-miraculous ways in which the dying communicate their needs, reveal their feelings, and even choreograph their own final moments; we also discover the gifts—of wisdom, faith, and love—that the dying leave for the living to share.”

The Protest, by Dianne Kozdrey Bunnell. (Follow this link to the Amazon page.)

Dianne Kozdrey Bunnell is my writing partner and good friend. But that is not the reason I am telling you to read her book, released today for Kindle on Amazon (also available in hardback on Amazon). The Protest is a damn good read. And it’s available today only (March 19) for the ridiculously low price of $2.99. It is worth every penny of that price, or the regular price of $4.99 after today.

Here is the review I wrote for Amazon:

This fictional memoir is a riveting tale superbly told about the lengths to which a mother’s love can go, as Janey strives to save her daughters from their father. I was alternately laughing and horrified as I read into the night, unable to put it down. It is a terrifyingly credible novel of what can happen when religion is used for personal power, and the manipulation of the lives of innocent children hangs in the balance. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves beautiful language, compelling characters, and a gripping read.

Knocking on Heaven’s Door: The Path to A Better Way of Death, Katy Butler

“Like millions of Americans caring for aging parents, Katy Butler assumed that her beloved mother and father would meet death on their own terms, free from medical overdoing. She was wrong. After doctors refused to disable the pacemaker that helped her 84-year-old father’s heart to outlive his brain [and probably should not have been inserted in the first place, following a stroke] she set out to understand why medicine, which saved his life as a young man, did little at the end but prolong his worst years. Her quest had barely begun when her mother rebelled against her doctors, refused open-heart surgery, and insisted on meeting death the old fashioned way: head-on.”

This book is a big eye-opener about how Medicare, the pharmaceutical industry, doctors and hospitals work when it comes to caring for the elderly. It is a story about how the medical profession refuses to consider the toll on the family or their wishes. It is a tale about the critical importance of how we as a nation fail our elderly and must work our way back to the sacred way of death that our ancestors knew before we got so smart. It is a book that should be read by everyone who has or will have an elderly partner or parent.

The Protest, Dianne Kozdrey Bunnell

This novel is based on the real life story of my friend and sister writer, a member of my writing group. Jane, the novel’s protagonist, loses her young adolescent twin daughters to brainwashing by their charismatic and twisted father, the Rev. Logan Churlick, and his fanatical religion. After battling through the courts to save them, Jane makes a Solomon decision that expresses mother-love beyond the bounds most of us will ever know. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book I hated to put down.

Mother Daughter Me: a memoir, Katie Hafner

An extraordinarily written story of three generations of women experimentally living together. Katie, a young widow with a teenage daughter, brings her mother to live with them. The many unresolved emotional crises of Katie’s childhood and the turbulent relationship with her mother then and now are a recipe for disaster. Some would say the experiment failed, as they could not continue to live under the same roof—as they did not in Katie’s childhood. But ultimately it becomes a courageous healing journey for all three women; and it is a riveting read.

At the end of book, Katie Hafner quotes Judith Wallerstein (The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce): “So lasting are the effects of divorce, so disruptive to the bond between parent and child, that some of these children find that when the roles are reversed and it is their parents who now need them, they want to pay them back in kind. What they didn’t get, they don’t want to give.” But, Katie says, “Even as I read this, I don’t budge from what has become a personal mantra: Our parents do the best they can with what they have to work with, and we owe them the same.”

Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison, Piper Kerman

I haven’t seen the NetFlix series yet, but I understand it’s dramaed up. Piper Kerman’s memoir about her year spent in a federal women’s prison for a 10-year-old crime is a beautifully told story of women looking out for one another with compassion, humor, creativity, and respect; helping each other do their time and survive. And they do it under the auspices of a system designed to do just the opposite. Kerman grows incredible friendships with women she would not have dreamed of associating with on the outside. They become family to her. I will watch the fictionalized version, but I’m glad I know the real story.

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, Anna Quindlen

I tried reading this memoir some time ago; alas, the three unread novels on the chair called to me louder and it went back to the library barely begun. But I just finished the audio version, read by the author, and I loved it! Especially the first half or so (I got a little bogged down toward the end). It’s about a woman’s life, from childhood memories to manic motherhood to middle age, using the events of her life to illuminate ours. It’s funny and poignant and thought-provoking. I found myself in it, as I leave so much of life behind, and look ahead. And it’s short: you can listen to it driving around town.

The author: “It’s odd when I think of the arc of my life, from child to young woman to aging adult. First I was who I was. Then I didn’t know who I was. Then I invented someone, and became her. Then I began to like what I’d invented. And finally I was what I was again. It turned out I wasn’t alone in that particular progression.”

http://annaquindlen.net/lots-of-candles/

The Storyteller, Jodi Picoult

My favorite author. I can’t put her books down once I start. Well, I wish I didn’t have to. “When does a moral choice become a moral imperative? And where does one draw the line between punishment and justice, forgiveness and mercy?” The horror story of my parents’ generation, arguably of any generation, weaves into the current day and braids with an ancient folk tale.