A couple of months back, I read and reviewed another bestseller titled "Water for Elephants," written by Sara Gruen. That book too, was an exceptionally well written page turner. The device used to give the story a frame was to have the protagonist be an elderly man in a nursing home, who was remembering his exciting past as a young man living life and meeting love while working in a sleazy circus. I loved the book. However, as I mentioned in that review, the story could have been framed in another way. It really wasn't about the old man in a nursing home. The author did have some knowledge and compassion about aging and an elder's feeling stuck and abandoned in a nursing home. But the main story line was an exciting circus tale.
Sebold, too, could have left out the Alzhiemer's disease. She shows knowledge of the disease and what it can do to the mind, but the rest of the book tells the tale of her life as she was raised by two mentally ill parents. There was plenty there without the mother having Alzheimer's.
Dysfunctional family? This family is the poster child for that phrase, long before Alzheimer's. It may, indeed, hit very close to home for those caregivers who are facing the puzzle of how to care for parents who never cared for them. In "The Almost Moon," we have the extreme version of this dilemma.
What is of interest to us here is the Alzheimer's connection. Aging, nursing homes and Alzheimer's is becoming so high profile that first-rate authors are working the device into their bestselling stories. This shows a movement in our culture. Aging, and some of the attending difficulties that accompany it, have been swept under the rug in past decades. The idea of setting a story in a nursing home, or of using dementia as a device to draw a reader into a story of family dysfunction, would not have interested many publishers a couple of decades ago. Suddenly, these issues are "sexy." They sell.
What, exactly, does that say about our society? I think there is some good in it. It says to me that society is now realizing that aging is a part of the lifecycle. That it won't just go away. Keeping Alzheimer's disease in the spotlight; showing nursing homes as something less than what they could be; these issues spotlighted in bestselling novels are signs that even popular culture is taking notice. Maybe that means more attention will be paid to finding solutions to the multiple problems we face as we care for our elders. Maybe that means that solutions will be found so that people like Helen and her mother won't face such a disturbing end. One can only hope.
For more information about Carol go to www.mindingourelders.com or www.mindingoureldersblogs.com.
