The Caregivers: A Support Group’s Stories of Slow Loss, Courage, and Love

Journalist Lake investigates the lives and difficulties of individuals providing care for family members with long-term illnesses. She shares stories from people like Penny, a botanist looking after her 87-year-old mother suffering from dementia. Penny struggles to manage her mother’s finances, medications, and exercise, facing the decision of one day putting her in a nursing home. Daniel, 88, an Army interrogator during WWII who translated at the Nuremberg trials, now suffers from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and cares for his bipolar wife, dealing with the irony that “he is helping a woman survive who doesn’t want to live.” And Liz moved her ailing husband into a veterans’ home after Alzheimer’s symptoms caused him to be increasingly abusive until she feared for her life. There are bright spots like Inga and her partner Louise celebrating their love and Louise’s recovery from cancer by getting married after 24 years together. Lake addresses psychological dynamics inherent in caregiving, such as role reversal, resentment, and anger. Caregivers deal with a grief that “is both protracted and unresolved” when someone is “gone and yet not.” This profound study on the effects of tending to ill loved ones offers powerful testimony to friendship and mutual support. (Feb.)