Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant: A Memoir, Roz Chast, 2014

Chast, the omnipresent cartoonist and social commentator from the pages of The New Yorker, has written a graphic/comic book memoir detailing in painful prose and pictures the decline and deaths of her parents, Elizabeth and George.  Born in 1912 and married in the late 30’s, they lived and Roz grew up in a not-chic part of Brooklyn.  As they moved from their late 70’s (when Roz moved with her husband and child to Connecticut) to their 90’s they experienced the inevitable decline of the very old—George developed senile dementia; Elizabeth fell several times;  and they gradually became very old.  The story of their declines and of Roz’s struggle as an only child to support, help, and finally care for them is heartbreaking and too painfully reminiscent of my Mother’s decline and death at 100 nine months ago.  While I had the support of a wonderful wife, children, and sister, Roz appears to have been alone in this endeavor and a mighty endeavor it was.  Both her parents died in their mid to late 90’s between 2007 and 2009, but the immediacy of the struggle remains for Chast and comes through powerfully in this comic book memoir.  Should be read by those Boomers whose parents are nearing the end as well as those of us entering our 70’s and by our children for whom the future holds these very real challenges.