Chronicles of Letting Go

My Father’s Ghost: the return of my old man & other second chances
Suzy McKee Charnas
Jeremy Tarcher/Putnam, NY 2002
ISBN 1-58542-185-5

suzych 's ambivalent, honest memoir narrates the decade supporting her aging Dad: first in a country outbuilding, then a city apartment, and finally in a nursing home. I found comfort in her detailing their tenuous relationship, the resentment she knows she feels, the aloof sorrow she suspects in her father, the uneasy alliance with her siblings. Next on the agenda for many is supporting our parents' generation as they age and die.

Disability Angle: Charnas is honest about her initial revulsion in caretaking, as well as their shared stubborn refusal to medicalize her father's existence. In retrospect, she discovers he'd been living with serious brain injury for a long time, which allows her to reevaluate and forgive behaviors she'd initially despised.

Bonus points: Scores of excerpts from her father's journals provide a witty Bohemian viewpoint on the 20th century, as well as turning the memoir into a dialog.

from pages 202-203

On Sunday we pack a suitcase to take to [the nursing home] the next day. He makes another musing comment about what "his room" will be like.

I don't reply, and he doesn't ask again. His meekness is killing me, as it is no doubt designed to do. I don't volunteer anything. I know what the damned room looks like, and I know that if he saw it beforehand he'd refuse to go. And he could do that, he could refuse. He is not being committed: he is being admitted.

... He has to agree. But he can always say no.

From [his] Journals, 1961

How gaily, how joyously
we do everything -- until our fiftieth year:
and then, how carefully, how inchingly,
we halfdo a few things, and those by ear...

Awe in a Broken World

Black Juice Margo Lanagan
Eos/Harper Collins 2005 USA
ISBN 0060743905

Ten exquisite short stories feature young, powerless narrators attempting life in a shattered, vaguely postapocalyptic society. Daily life is a mystery: some acquiesce, some battle, some leap into magic. Slotted as YA but don't let that stop you.

Disability angle: The characters' viewpoints are marginal and skewed and raw. The heroic saga of a troop of elephants finding a new home away from the zoo evoked my initial immersions in Deaf and blind cultures.

Bonus points: fun to read aloud -- stories are still delightful the third time through.

This is first in a series of rerun postings from a previous journal, I'm hoping to get in the habit of posting my reading so I can, at least, find the titles again.