A moving story of connection between a daughter and her mother in this diary-like memoir of a mother’s final days
Visiting is at times humorous, heartbreaking, and brutally honest in exploring Polly Walker Blakemore’s mother’s end of life experience in hospice care.
Polly is fortunate to have her mother cared for in her own home. While she visits almost daily, a small team of home care providers maintains a firm foundation of supervision. It’s these women—Blakemore and the caregivers—who not only witness but manage the daily toll of physical, mental, and emotional symptoms of dementia and depression affecting Blakemore’s mother, also named Polly.
Throughout Visiting’s diary entries, Polly recounts ordinary conversations about meals, television shows, sores and bandages, medications, and other minutiae that take on new meaning when they become the only conversations she and her mother have. Blakemore is a sensitive and thoughtful adult child, the kind many of us would hope to be if presented with the obligation and opportunity to accompany an elderly parent in their winding down.
Visiting is most rewarding in these quiet moments where Blakemore reflects on her memories of her grandmother’s dying juxtaposed with her mother’s dying, and how her role has and hasn’t changed in each set of circumstances. Especially moving is when Blakemore talks about the life that these women’s hands have held, while she now holds them in her own.
The tight focus on Blakemore’s visits reflects her mother’s small world. Although Blakemore’s brother, her children, and other relatives do visit, they are very much on the periphery of the relationship between Blakemore and her mother; we know more about Polly’s caregivers than we do these other family members. The book’s diary format offers a routine that tempts skimming over reading, but in Blakemore’s gentle writing, it truly reflects the passage of time—too much and too soon, all at once. Her writing is never maudlin or melodramatic, yet it shows a tenderness whenever her mom needs it, much like a harried mother takes a moment to calm a small child, except here, the roles are reversed.
Blakemore’s inclusion of family photos makes the entire memoir more real and highlights the close resemblances of Blakemore, her mother, and grandmother. The effect leaves a feeling of being a guest in their home, rather than a distant reader.
For anyone shouldering eldercare responsibilities, Blakemore’s Visiting is a balm. It’s nice to know you’re not alone in being sandwiched between taking care of your old parents while also raising your young children. Blakemore recounts a clear-eyed look at the responsibilities, challenges, fears, and, yes, even joys of caring for her dying mother. Her candid approach offers serious food for thought, too, about aging in place, the care that it requires, and how to spend the last days of life living it well.
The post Visiting by Polly Walker Blakemore appeared first on Independent Book Review.