Everyone in this book is 15 years older than when it was written.  Many of the individuals featured have died and their children have gone on to live their own lives, either better or worse for the experience of caring for an elderly parent.  A very timely read which has helped me in several ways.  First, it helps to know that you are not alone and that so many young-olds are helping their old-old parents with their end of life deterioration.  Second, it’s full of anecdotes, suggestions, comments etc that helped me understand that my mother was not just a responsibility or burden but had lived a full life and was entitled to an ending with dignity and serenity, in so far as that might be possible.  Third, it focused me on the advancing years and declining abilities that will be my constant companion for the rest of my life as I close in on 70. Full of quotes from Yeats (I’m tied to a dying animal), Grumbach (working definition of an optimist is someone who hasn’t lived very long”), Frost (“nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope”), Terkel (“The reason I regret dying is that I have had a really good time’), Maugham (“All my life I have believed in later.  But there is no later now”), Tolstoy (“the life of an ordinary man, if accurately captured, would be the best and most complex piece of literature every written”), Carver (“And, did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on this earth.”), William Stafford’s Ask Me, and Willa Cather’s ‘That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”  Henry James said: Three things in human life are important.  The first is to be kind.  The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind.”   So now I propose to treat my mother with patience, sympathy, respect, and acceptance; to listen, acknowledge her personhood and history, touch her with love, and relax and enjoy what time remains.  I must be strong and not take her anger and frustration personally.