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I'll be seeing you : a memoir /

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Random House, [2020]Edition: First editionDescription: xiii, 198 pages ; 22 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780593134672
  • 0593134672
Other title:
  • I will be seeing you
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 306.874 B 23
LOC classification:
  • HQ1063.6 .B455 2020
Summary: "For as long as Elizabeth can remember, she has watched her father trail after her mother, kissing her multiple times a day and holding her hand. She watched her mother smooth the lines in her father's face and pay attention to his every move, even when she was desperate for some time to herself. When her parents began to age, Elizabeth and her siblings are placed in the difficult position of taking over more and more supportive roles and tasks. They fix their parents' home, negotiate finances, eventually weather the back and forth of will they or won't they move into a nursing facility; finally they do. Berg gracefully takes readers through navigating the emotional and physical challenges of guiding parents through the final stages of life. In this touching and heart-warming memoir, Berg includes raw accounts of disagreements, encouraging stubborn parents, and dealing with her own heartache and loss. Berg confronts both the realities of the situation and the brighter, happy, funny and endearing moments and memories"--
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Holdings
Item type Current library Home library Collection Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Standard Loan Coeur d'Alene Library Adult Biography Coeur d'Alene Library Book B BERG BERG (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 50610022724335
Standard Loan Hayden Library Adult Biography Hayden Library Book BERG-BERG (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 50610022547801
Standard Loan Liberty Lake Library Adult Biography Liberty Lake Library Book BIO BERG BER (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 31421000658410
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The beloved New York Times bestselling author tells the poignant love story of caring for her parents in their final years in this beautifully written memoir.

" I'll Be Seeing You moved me and broadened my understanding of the human condition."--Wally Lamb, author of I Know This Much Is True

Elizabeth Berg's father was an Army veteran who was a tough man in every way but one: He showed a great deal of love and tenderness to his wife. Berg describes her parents' marriage as a romance that lasted for nearly seventy years; she grew up watching her father kiss her mother upon leaving home, and kiss her again the instant he came back. His idea of when he should spend time away from her was never.

But then Berg's father developed Alzheimer's disease, and her parents were forced to leave the home they loved and move into a facility that could offer them help. It was time for the couple's children to offer, to the best of their abilities, practical advice, emotional support, and direction--to, in effect, parent the people who had for so long parented them. It was a hard transition, mitigated at least by flashes of humor and joy. The mix of emotions on everyone's part could make every day feel like walking through a minefield. Then came redemption.

I'll Be Seeing You charts the passage from the anguish of loss to the understanding that even in the most fractious times, love can heal, transform, and lead to graceful--and grateful--acceptance.

"For as long as Elizabeth can remember, she has watched her father trail after her mother, kissing her multiple times a day and holding her hand. She watched her mother smooth the lines in her father's face and pay attention to his every move, even when she was desperate for some time to herself. When her parents began to age, Elizabeth and her siblings are placed in the difficult position of taking over more and more supportive roles and tasks. They fix their parents' home, negotiate finances, eventually weather the back and forth of will they or won't they move into a nursing facility; finally they do. Berg gracefully takes readers through navigating the emotional and physical challenges of guiding parents through the final stages of life. In this touching and heart-warming memoir, Berg includes raw accounts of disagreements, encouraging stubborn parents, and dealing with her own heartache and loss. Berg confronts both the realities of the situation and the brighter, happy, funny and endearing moments and memories"--

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

October 30, 2010 The failing of an aging parent is one of those old stories that feels abrasively new to the person experiencing it. At eighty-nine years of age, my father has begun, in his own words, to "lose it." This is a man who was for so many years terrifying to me. He was tall and fit, a lifer in the U.S. Army whose way of awakening me in the morning when I was in high school was to stand at the threshold of my bedroom and say, "Move out." He was never quick to smile, he put the fear of God into every young man I dated in high school, and if he said to do something, you did it immediately, no excuses. He yelled at us a lot, and, like many men of his generation, he believed in corporeal punishment. Over the years he mellowed, though he was still quick to rise to anger if the occasion seemed to call for it. But he mellowed, and none of us who really knew him could help it: not only did we love him, we liked him. The most striking thing about him was his truthfulness: the man would never lie. And he was a big softie when it came to animals and to my mother: she was the place where he put his tenderness. He had a dry sense of humor, and he was vastly intelligent. But now. My mother says he sits sometimes with his hands over his face, unmoving, and she thinks he is depressed. Also, she has noticed things happening more and more often: a repetition of questions that she has already answered many times over. A kind of paranoia: he claims things have been taken from the glove compartment of the car he no longer drives. My mother finds him in the closet of the TV room and he says he is looking for someone who came out of there to mess with things on his TV tray. When the lid of the garbage can goes missing (after a day of high winds), he says it must be hooligans in the neighborhood--better call the police. The last time I talked to my mother on the phone, she said, "This is the best one yet. The other day, your father said, 'What's the matter with us? We don't get along like we used to. Are you seeing someone else?' " My mother and I laughed together, but I think it's safe to say that her heart was breaking a little, too. She said, "I asked him, 'Have you seen my wrinkles lately?' " It wouldn't matter if he didn't have macular degeneration and could see every line in her face. My father continues to adore my mother. Always has, always will. On every occasion that called for gifts, he lavished her with beautiful things: clothes, jewelry. On one memorable Christmas Eve, he gave her a full-length white mink coat. She didn't want it, but how could she tell him, him grinning and taking pictures of her wearing it as she stood next to the Christmas tree? She rarely wore it after that day, and when he asked why, she said, "It's too warm." They kiss when they wake up in the morning, they kiss before they go to sleep. When my father worked, they kissed when he left and they kissed when he came home. He's a man whose mother died when he was around three years old, and he was raised by an emotionally bankrupt father and a cruel housekeeper. He found everything he needed in my mother, and that was always clear to me: she was his love. His pal. His partner. His confidante. His North Star. He does not want to be without her, not in the daytime and not at night. When I once suggested that my mother should probably have time away from him every now and then, he said, "I don't have much time left. The time I do have, why, I want to spend it with her." My mother's views are somewhat different: when my parents stayed with me in a house where the guest room had twin beds, my mother exclaimed, "My own bed!" Her absolute delight was kind of heartbreaking. Over twenty years ago, when my father had a heart attack, it was a whopper--his heart stopped twelve times in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and at first it wasn't clear that he'd make it. I flew to Minnesota with a black dress in my suitcase, and went directly to his bedside. He was sleeping, surrounded by monitors, hooked up to IVs, pale in his hospital gown. When he opened his eyes, he said, "What are you doing here?" "Oh, I was just in the neighborhood," I said, and he smiled. Then he said, "Where's your mother?" I have heard this question all my life. It is like a brain tattoo, my father wanting to know where my mother is, because he wants her near him always. These days, my mother says, he follows her around the house. She will say, "I'm going in to change the sheets," and he will come in the bedroom and watch her. She doesn't get out much, but she does have a standing weekly date to go shopping with her sisters. When that happens, he sits by the kitchen window, where there is a view of the street, to wait for her. She brings home his dinner; he will not eat without her. She worries about what will happen if he becomes more compromised, if she cannot leave him alone. But my father's question, "Are you seeing someone else?" Oh, that was a good one. My mother later said, "You know, when I was in high school, I went out with Bob Harrington--I think we went to a powwow or something. And that was it. One date. I saw his obituary in the paper last week, and today your father said to me, 'You haven't been the same since you found out Bob died.' " "Oh, God," I said, when she told me that. Tenderly. It was on my mother's birthday when I spoke to her, and she said, "Your father felt so bad that he didn't get me a gift. And I told him, 'You know what you could give me for my birthday? Go in the den and do your Sudoku, or a crossword puzzle, or listen to one of your books on tape.' " "Did he do it?" I asked. "I don't think so," she said. When my mother told me how bad my dad felt about not getting her a gift, I thought, Whatever was I doing that would have been more important than taking my dad out to get his wife of sixty-seven years a birthday present? I should have driven up from Chicago, or flown up, and taken my dad to the fanciest department store in town. I should have stood near him, guiding him as unobtrusively as I could; I should have said, "So whaddya think, Dad? What do you want to give her?" Apart from the full-on adoration you've given her since the day you met her. 1942. The back of the dime store. By the parakeets. You home on leave from the service. An introduction by a mutual friend. Growing up with a father who was besotted with his wife lay down the gauntlet. I have not met the challenge. I failed in my marriage, and I have failed in relationships since, including the one I am in now; I fail a lot in the one I'm in now, but my partner, Bill, is patient. Sometimes I sit quietly to ponder why I have such trouble in relationships. "You just want to be free," an old boyfriend I'd run from told me when I saw him after many years. It was true then. I guess it still is, in a way. I want to be with someone and I want to be free, too. But sometimes I look at the fantastically outsized and romantic love I witnessed all my life between my parents and I think, That's the reason. Who could measure up? Excerpted from I'll Be Seeing You: A Memoir by Elizabeth Berg All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Beloved novelist Berg, a New York Times best-selling author whose Open House was an Oprah's Book Club Selection, turns to nonfiction to tell an affecting story. Having observed her parents' ongoing love affair for decades, she finally had to step forth and help when her father developed Alzheimer's and he and her mother had to move into a special facility.

Publishers Weekly Review

Berg (The Confession Club) eloquently explores the pain of realizing one's parents are in their declining years. After her father began to develop dementia in 2010 (later diagnosed as Alzheimer's) and her mother was less able to shovel snow or use the stairs at the Minnesota house they'd lived in for 45 years, they moved into a senior community that her father enjoyed, but her mother barely tolerated. Their 68-year marriage became strained, and Berg's brother and sister helped to defuse tensions by, among other things, accompanying their father to breakfast at the senior home, and getting their mother to join a book club at the facility. Two years after they moved into assisted living, however, Berg realized that the end of her father's life was near. "Sometimes we feel pretty certain that we know what's coming," Berg muses. "But really, we never do. We just walk on. We have to." Her father died the day after Christmas, just minutes after sharing with a caregiver a dream he had of fishing with his brother; Berg's mother died three years later in hospice, with her parting words to her daughter, "I will miss you, too." This bittersweet, touching story will particularly resonate with those caring for older parents. (Oct.)

Booklist Review

As beloved, best-selling novelist Berg (The Confession Club, 2019) turns 70, her thoughts are often with her parents in Minnesota. Her father, who was once an imposing if not patient man, is heading into dementia; her mother loses her sister and is losing her patience with both her husband and her daughters. Berg's parents have reached the point where they are no longer safe in their own home, but resist the idea of moving into assisted living. Berg's sister, Vickie, lives nearby, but the author visits often to help her parents make this life-changing transition, and memories of her childhood come crashing back as she helps them sort through their possessions. Her parents always had a loving marriage, but as her father becomes more dependent on his wife, Berg's mother becomes so angry and resentful that the author and her sister finally lash out, and then suffer from guilt. There are bright moments, too, when her parents seem to be meeting friends and finding their place in their new home; but there are other challenges for both caregivers and patients when their physical and mental health continue to fail. Berg's fans will be touched by her disclosures, and readers caring for an aging parent will see themselves in Berg's painfully honest, beautifully written account, and be comforted by her insights.

Kirkus Book Review

Novelist Berg documents a year in the life of her aging parents. "Whatever your age, you are picnicking with your back to a forest full of bears," writes the author. At 70, she still feels youthful, "someone with grass stains on her knees and a roller-skate key around her neck," but she knows she will soon experience the physical diminishment her parents endured a decade earlier. This memoir charts a year in her parents' lives, from October 2010 to July 2011, when they were forced to leave their beloved Minnesota home and move into an assisted living facility due to her father's Alzheimer's. It was a dramatic decline for a man who was "a lifer in the U.S. Army whose way of awakening me in the morning when I was in high school was to stand at the threshold of my bedroom and say, 'Move out.' " Berg recounts her trips to Minnesota to help her parents adjust, her dealings with realtors and auctioneers unsympathetic to the family's tragedy, and conversations with her resentful mother, whose anger at her husband's rapidly slipping away led her to wish he would go to sleep one night and not wake up. "The failing of an aging parent is one of those old stories that feels abrasively new to the person experiencing it," she writes. The narrative is repetitive, with constant references to food and snippets of trivial conversations with acquaintances readers meet only once. This sketchiness and repetition suggest that Berg may have had mixed feelings about sharing this intimate portrait, and the memoir suffers as a result. Moving moments peek through, however, such as the author's portrayal of her parents' decadeslong practice of kissing first thing in the morning and last thing at night; when her father couldn't remember one day if he had kissed his wife good morning, he kissed her again to make sure. A tender if timid account of the sadness of old age. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Elizabeth Berg was born December 2, 1948 and educated at the University of Minnesota and at St. Mary's College.

Elizabeth Berg's first novel was "Durable Goods". "Talk Before Sleep" was a 1996 Abby Honor Book & a "New York Times" bestseller. "Range of Motion", "The Pull of the Moon", & "Joy School" were all critically acclaimed bestsellers. In 1996, she won the New England Booksellers Award for body of work. In 1997, she won the NEBA Award in fiction, and in 2000 became the author of an Oprah Book Club selection. Her book, The Dream Lover, is a New York Times 2015 bestseller.

(Bowker Author Biography)

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