Making an Exit: A Mother-Daughter Drama with Alzheimer's, Machine Tools, and Laughter

At a time when such things were rare, Elinor Fuchs's mother, Lil, escaped a miserable marriage, took back her maiden name, left young Elinor to be raised by grandparents, and launched a career that led her from the midwest to Washington, D.C. Rejoining her as an adolescent, Elinor watched as Lil traveled the world selling automotive parts and military gear, gave fabulous parties, and "in any given room, took up all the air there was." With her stunning looks and drive for success, Lil was a figure to admire, not a mother to love. Elinor determined to despise her mother's values and, once in college, to keep her distance.

Making an Exit is the moving account of what happened afterward, during the final years of Lil's life. Following her mother's diagnosis with Alzheimer's, Fuchs finds herself the caretaker. As the disease progresses, she becomes her mother's mother, dressing her, bathing her, feeding her-all with growing compassion. Lil changes, too: filled with new warmth, the word "love" now regularly crosses her lips. And through the fantastic poetry in the disintegration of Lil's language, mother and daughter make a surprising new start.

With wit, wisdom, and theatrical flair, Making an Exit tells an uncommon story of a parent's decline-less a conventional narrative of aging and loss than one of discovery, devotion, and spiritual growth. "The last ten years," writes Fuchs, "they were our best."

At a time when such things were rare, Elinor Fuchs's mother, Lil, escaped a miserable marriage, took back her maiden name, left young Elinor to be raised by grandparents, and launched a career that led her from the Midwest to Washington, D.C. Rejoining her as an adolescent, Elinor watched as Lil traveled the world selling automotive parts and military gear, gave fabulous parties, and "in any given room, took up all the air there was." With her stunning looks and drive for success, Lil was a figure to admire, not a mother to love. Elinor determined to despise her mother's values and, once in college, to keep her distance.

Making an Exit is the moving and insightful account of what happened afterward, during the final years of Lil's life. Following her mother's diagnosis with Alzheimer's, Fuchs finds herself the caretaker. As the disease progresses, she becomes her mother's mother, dressing her, bathing her, feeding herall with growing compassion. Lil changes, too: filled with new warmth, the word "love" now regularly crosses her lips. And through the fantastic poetry in the disintegration of Lil's language, mother and daughter make a surprising new start.

With wit, wisdom, and theatrical flair, Making an Exit tells an uncommon story of a parent's declineless a conventional narrative of aging and loss than one of discovery, devotion, and spiritual growth. "The last ten years," writes Fuchs, "they were our best."

"A rare and wonderful rollercoaster of a book, tender and touching, hilarious and high-spiriteda moving portrait of a daughter and mother that is fiercely intelligent, ineffably sad, and, finally, transcendent."Kathleen Woodward, author of Aging and its Discontents

"How these women touched me! Driven and real, Making an Exit hurtles toward its truths with uncommon feeling and honesty."Gish Jen, author of The Love Wife

"Unflinchingly honest, open-hearted, and funny, this is a work of passionate intelligence and deep humanity."Joyce Antler, author of The Journey Home

"It is refreshing to see the final stages of one woman's life and eventual death treated with such humanity, compassion, and dignity . . . Those horrible phrases that many adult children whose parents succumb to Alzheimer's, senility, or disablement eventually have to deal with'assisted living' and 'nursing home'are stripped of much of their mystery in Fuchs' book, and are shown for their absurdity, stark reality, banality, and also moments of joy."Michael Standaert, Los Angeles Times

"Fuchs' mother is larger than life in both her salad days and her days of word salad. And Making an Exit overflows with lifeits sorrows and surprises, its follies and joys."Anne Basting, Director of the Center on Age and Community, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

"A rare and wonderful rollercoaster of a book, tender and touching, hilarious and high-spiriteda moving portrait of a daughter and mother that is fiercely intelligent, ineffably sad, and, finally, transcendent."Kathleen Woodward, author of Aging and its Discontents

"[A] wry account of a once-alienated daughter who becomes ever more entwined with her mother as the older woman makes a memorable decline . . . There's little room for pity or censure as the reader is carried along by a great story. Lillian, an adamantly independent woman all her life, finally needs to be taken care of. She's mostly lost her mind, and although she'll never really know it, she needs her daughter. Fuchs combines her account of the weirdness of caring for a physically competent, mentally absent woman with episodes from their shared past. Her brisk prose effectively captures Lillian's energy, the oddities of communication that Alzheimer's imposes, the endless grind of arranging and placating caregivers, and her own emotional landscape when she finds herself trapped in a state of emergency that lasts a decade. It didn't come cheap, but Fuchs has achieved a beautiful balance of humor and tragedyall wrung from the same mess of real life."Kirkus Reviews

"A paradoxical line is finely drawn [in this book] between tragedy and comedy; Fuchs depicts her mother's gradual deterioration with humor, sensitivity, and grief that becomes more profound as Lillian weakens. This literate book with its classical underpinnings is an easy, delightful read, and highly recommended for public libraries and consumer collections in hospital and medica