cover image Who Will Remember Me?: A Daughter's Memoir of Grief and Recovery

Who Will Remember Me?: A Daughter's Memoir of Grief and Recovery

Barbara Hamilton-Holway. Skinner House Books, $14 (0pp) ISBN 978-1-55896-460-0

Unitarian-Universalist minister Hamilton-Holway writes candidly about her mother's protracted illness and death from lung cancer. ""You come into the world vulnerable, and you go out vulnerable,"" her father remarks as they all watch a video of the family's first great-grandchild learning to walk. The memoir is filled with poignancy: sifting through the letters and accumulations of a lifetime; watching her sharp and competent mother reduced to physical incapacity and intermittent dementia. Hamilton-Holway speaks honestly about the devastating effect all this has on her as a caregiver and daughter (""I am a minister needing a minister,"" she confesses) and is also frank about the times her relationship with her mother felt more like ""smothering"" than ""mothering."" Drawing strength from poetry and literature, Hamilton-Holway reflects on her mother's death, her daughter's future and the circle of life.