Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

Like thousands of other children of the post WW-II baby boom generation, I am involved in helping my parents transition from independent living to assisted living. Cartoonist and author Roz Chast has chronicled this transition with her parents in a unique, idiosyncratic, humorous, and honest way in her wonderful book Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir.

The book is a series of cartoon images, personal photos, and narrative that document the last chapters in her parents’ lives. This style was much more effective than a normal prose account of the issues that elderly people and their offspring face as life draws to a close. I found it incredibly cathartic, funny, and poignant, all at the same time. Most of all I found it real, which is a high compliment because I recoil at spiritual platitudes, palliatives, and fairy tales when it comes to dealing with the big things in life and with death. The book was so good I sent a copy to my sister and she loved it just as much as I did. I am grateful that Lorraine Olendzenski recommended it to me.

Jon R. Montan, Jr., Summer 2015