"Timely, for the Sandwich Generation..."
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A Daughter's Search for What Really Matters--
and How She Found It Caring for Mama Jo
by Jo Maeder(Da Capo Press, 2009)
Hardcover, 292 pages, $25.00 U.S.
Sometimes books come into our lives in the strangest ways -- and yet at the most perfect time. Here I am, struggling with caregiver responsibilities and decision-making for my mother after a devastating heart attack and stroke(s) changed both our lives forever. Since early February, I've barely been able to read any book, much less work or write reviews for RebelHousewife.com. Caregiving has been a full-time job.
Then our friends at Da Capo Press sent WHEN I MARRIED MY MOTHER
by Jo Maeder, a remarkable story about a woman's decision to move in with, and care for, her estranged mother in the last years of her mother's life...a timely tale for the Sandwich Generation.Besides instantly identifying with the grown daughter-aging mother angst of this situation, I thoroughly enjoyed the story of Jo's life with her mother, Mama Jo. Maeder was a forty-something, independent single woman living in New York, a DJ for ultra-hip Z100, when it became obvious her aging mother could no longer live independently in her home in Virginia. Maeder had not lived with her mother since her parents divorced when she was a child.
In an unusual solution, prompted by a mix of fate, timing and circumstance, Maeder abandoned her glamorous life in New York City. She bought her first house, in Greensboro, NC, to be near her older brother, and re-located herself and Mama Jo to North Carolina. It's not nearly as easy or simple as it sounds (actually, it doesn't sound easy, does it?!), as Mama Jo was a classic, certifiable pack-rat, with decades of accumulation piled up in her dilapidated house and mental issues to go right along with the mess.
When I Married My Mother is the biographical journey the author researched amidst the detritus of her mother's life. With great sensitivity, Maeder pieced together her mother's complicated story and discovered greater appreciation and new-found love for her quirky mother, a greater understanding of her mother's impact on her own life and on the relationships within her fractured family.
While this is not the journey I would choose, or even could if I wanted to, with a husband and three children to care for, I respect Maeder's strength and experience of sacrificing so much to care for her mother. A great story, well-written.
"I had discovered there is no greater gift than to be with someone at the end of their life. True, you might get a concrete reward out of it -- like an enormous doll collection [her mother's legacy, from years of eccentric collecting], or more -- but all that I had accomplished professionally had never given me the satisfaction, and appreciation for life, that caring for my mother had." (Page 225)
Great advice from Jo Maeder: Five Simple Ways to Get Along with the Elderly.