No More Words
A Journal of My Mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In 1999 Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the famed aviator and author, moved from her home in Connecticut to the farm in Vermont where her daughter, Reeve, and Reeve's family live.
Mrs. Lindbergh was in her nineties and had been rendered nearly speechless years earlier by a series of small strokes that also left her frail and dependent on others for her care. No More Words is a moving and compassionate memoir by Reeve Lindbergh of the final seventeen months of her mother's life.
Reeve Lindbergh is an accomplished author who had learned to write in part by reading her mother's many books -- among them the international bestseller Gift from the Sea -- and also by absorbing her mother's careful and intimate way of examining the world around her. So Reeve's inability to communicate with her mother, a woman long recognized in her family and throughout the world as a gifted communicator, left her daughter deeply saddened and frustrated. Worse, from time to time Mrs. Lindbergh would offer a comment or observation that seemed harsh, shocking, or simply unrelated to the events around her, leaving Reeve anxious and distressed about what her mother might be thinking. Anyone who has had to care for an elderly parent disabled by Alzheimer's or stroke will understand immediately the heartache and anguish Reeve suffered.
Reeve writes with great sensitivity and sympathy for her mother's plight, while also analyzing her own conflicting feelings. Mrs. Lindbergh was fortunate to have full-time care, but a tremendous emotional burden still fell on Reeve. And even as she worried about her mother's long silences and enigmatic remarks, and monitored her daily care, Reeve had her husband and son to look after. But mixed with the sadness and responsibility were moments of humor and happiness, and even an eventual understanding, all the more treasured for being so unexpected.
No More Words is a tender tribute from daughter to mother, from one writer to another who was her model and mentor. It is a loving and poignant work, rich with insight into life's final stage.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After suffering several strokes, Anne Morrow Lindbergh (who died this year) spent the last year of her life in Vermont, on the farm of her daughter Reeve's family. Just as Anne undertook Gift from the Sea in 1955 as a spiritual recon, so Reeve (Under a Wing) here explores her feelings about her visibly aging mother. Early on, Reeve dreams she's sitting on a railway bench flanked by two women: the vibrant mother of decades earlier and the ghostly incarnation living with her now. "You just have to take care of her," her "real" mother tells her. "Taking care" is not about feeding and bathing (the domain of some extraordinary Buddhist caregivers), but witnessing her transition from old age into death. Any reader who's cared for an elderly, dying loved one will hear echoes of his or her own wracking doubts. When they're sitting still, staring out into space, we want them to talk or smile, participate "in some way that we can understand." We panic at inappropriate, off-the-wall remarks was it simply theatrical or has another neurological byway collapsed? And the kicker: however much we've done for them, we feel guilty that we can't keep them from dying. With her mother now shunning speech, Reeve too gravitates to a lean, reporting style. Quotations from Anne's writings are apt but brief. And while the reader expects death in the end, it's still wrenching when it comes.
