The surgery was intense, and the recovery was difficult and would have been for anyone, but because my mom has dementia, she was constantly confused about why she could not walk. The doctors had put in a rod and some nails to hold the bones together. She had recently had another stroke and broken her hip and leg. But what I did tell her was about how my mom was also not doing well, although in different ways. Itō (the book is written in first person but the chapter heads refer to this person as Itō) in the story gets her elderly parents a dog, but they are too old to care for it and the dog pees on the floor so many times the flooring has to be changed and then soon there are dried up pieces of dog shit in the corner, a sign of her mom’s decline. I did not tell her why, but I suggested this book because much of it is about taking care of one’s elderly parents from far away and flying back and forth and there is also a dog with a starring role. When my friend was done with her story, I told her she had to read this new Hiromi Itō book, The Thorn Puller. But as my friend told this story, a story with lots of chaos and anxiety, she kept returning to how there was cat shit all over the kitchen because no one would clean the cat box. But also, the friend’s sister who lived with the mom was a part of this story and the sister’s many unemployed friends and there was a lot of coming and going. This was something new for the mom, a new way of being in the world that confused my friend. The mom dealt with the haunting by going to the bar every night. When she came back, he had died so recently that the nurse had not yet closed his eyes, and his eyes, the panic in them, now haunted her mom. The mom’s boyfriend had died in the hospital, during the one moment the mom had gone home for a break. Subscribe now or preorder a copy from the LARB shop.Ī FRIEND TOLD ME a story about her elderly mom whose partner had died. This article is an excerpt from the LARB Quarterly, no.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |