I often didn't know whether to laugh or cry while reading Welcome to the Departure Lounge: Adventures in Mothering Mother, by Meg Federico, so I ended up doing some of both. This is a wonderfully honest memoir of Federico's "adventures in mothering mother" (as the subtitle puts it) during her mother's final decline. It is by turns tragic and funny, and it should probably be on the required reading list for anyone dealing with the care of an aging parent. Federico's 81-year-old mother Addie, a patrician New Jersey matron, lives a topsy-turvy life with her volatile new husband Walter. Walter has Alzheimer's, and Addie is frail and nearly blind, and despite various spills and alcohol-fueled thrills, Addie and Walter refuse to stay put in a nursing home. So Federico and Walter's daughter Cathy set up a precarious home-care situation for Addie and Walter, helped out by a hodge-podge of hired health-care workers, and overseen part-time by Federico, her brother, and Cathy. And it is this crazy situation at home that comes to be known as the Departure Lounge.
So much of what goes on in the Departure Lounge is absolutely appalling, but Federico is able to see the humor in every situation, and writes with poignancy and warmth about the good, the bad, and the ugly of elder care. She also writes with insight about how becoming her mother's caregiver transformed their very complicated parent-child relationship.
This relationship was fascinating to me because of its complications. Addie was a rich, mid-20th century wife and mother who raised children the way upper-middle class WASPs raised them then--with lots of criticism, judgement, and rules, without listening to them, and even tying them to the bed at night if they got up and inconvenienced you with night wanderings. The stories of how Federico's mother treated her were horrifying to me from today's perspective, but it was also interesting to see how Federico came to terms with her mother's rotten parenting style, and how she came to, if not forgive her, at least feel she more fully understood her mother and where she came from.
That the author could write about some of this heartbreaking stuff with such grace and wit was why I would recommend the book. It's a bittersweet memoir, one with important lessons for us all.
This relationship was fascinating to me because of its complications. Addie was a rich, mid-20th century wife and mother who raised children the way upper-middle class WASPs raised them then--with lots of criticism, judgement, and rules, without listening to them, and even tying them to the bed at night if they got up and inconvenienced you with night wanderings. The stories of how Federico's mother treated her were horrifying to me from today's perspective, but it was also interesting to see how Federico came to terms with her mother's rotten parenting style, and how she came to, if not forgive her, at least feel she more fully understood her mother and where she came from.
That the author could write about some of this heartbreaking stuff with such grace and wit was why I would recommend the book. It's a bittersweet memoir, one with important lessons for us all.
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