A bittersweet season : caring for our aging parents and ourselves

 by Jane Gross. As baby boomers age, the U.S. population older than 85 has brought Americans to a. unprecedented demographic crossroad. according to New York Times reporter Gross. How will we care for aging parents without robbing them of the dignity that accompanies independence? How will we manage care for them and care for children, marriages, careers? Gross faced many of those questions when her widowed mother, living in retirement in Florida, began to decline in her eighties. Gross and her brother moved their mother back to New York and began a three-year negotiation of tasks and responsibilities that consumed their lives. Drawing on her own experience and interviews with experts, Gross details the myriad decisions along the way, from the first signs of parents' declining health to later decisions about extraordinary measures to keep them alive. She explores how the process of watching the long, slow deaths of parents should prepare one for making arrangements for one's own decline and death. A heart-wrenching story and an informative guide for those caring for aging parents. --Booklist (Check Catalog)