A Bittersweet Season: Caring for Our Aging Parents--and Ourselves
Author: Gross, JaneBrand: VintageColor: Sky/Pale blueEdition: ReprintBinding: PaperbackNumber Of Pages: 448Release Date: 01-05-2012Details: Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Prologue Finding Our Better Selves The day I started writing this book, I spent hours commiserating by telephone with three friends who were being turned upside down by the needs of their aging parents. One lived a short distance from her mother, who was in precarious health, bouncing back and forth between home and hospital, unwilling to consider a retirement community or nursing home. For months, without time to rest and regroup, my friend, herself nearing the end of a fatal illness and keeping it from her mother, had managed a series of medical and home care emergencies. She was running on empty. The second friend, rocked by the financial strains and childrearing conflicts that often follow divorce, had largely abdicated to his siblings the demands of long-distance supervision of two