Caring for Mother: A Daughter's Long Goodbye

by Virginia Stem Owens

Overview

In Caring for Mother, Virginia Stem Owens gives a clear and realistic account of caring for an elderly loved one. Along the way, Owens notes the spiritual challenges she encountered, not the least of which included fear of her own suffering and death. This book will be a helpful companion to those who have recently assumed the role of caregiver, helping them anticipate some of the emotional turbulence they will encounter along the way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780664236304
Publisher:	Westminster John Knox Press
Publication date:	06/04/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Virginia Stem Owens has written sixteen books and numerous articles and reviews. She is member of the editorial board of Books and Culture.

Read an Excerpt

People who are just starting down this path of caregiving might be overwhelmed by reading the book. Others who have put in a few months or years, however, may find comfort in seeing their own experience reflected here. They may also find the questions they have feared to ask or acknowledge formulated for them. C. S. Lewis is reported to have said that we read in order to know we’re not alone. In addition, the book may help those foreseeing their own stint at caregiving looming a few of the emotional ambushes along the way, so much ahead. If this book helps them to anticipate and thus forestall

Editorial Reviews

Death is never timely: it comes either too soon or too late. In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion recounts the aftermath of her husband's sudden death at the dinner table. At the other edge of the spectrum, Owens describes seven years preceding her mother's relentless descent into dementia, "God's own breath slowly leaking out through the fissures in her brain." Afflicted first with Parkinson's, then small strokes and Alzheimer's disease, Mrs. Stem eventually required round-the-clock care. Owens moved next door and spent hours every day with her: "All I could do was squat beside the avalanche, listening for any sign of life; sometimes I could hear a faint but familiar echo of her voice or gesture from under the heap." Through essays as incisive and insightful as Didion's, this account succeeds on multiple levels: medical detective story, personal memoir, flawless description, philosophical and spiritual exploration (where is the self when the brain no longer functions normally?). Owens offers not self-help but hope as she bears witness to the grief and glory of life's ending: "If love... weren't the center from which life flows, if it didn't, as Dante says, move the stars, how could we bear such weight?" (June)

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