Last Call (Memoir): My Mother's Descent Into Darkness

by Paul Heller

Two of Heller’s professional writing friends told him that he would be run out of town if he ever dared to publish “Last Call”, probably the most brutally honest book about caring for a parent with dementia you will ever read. But here it is. In spare but specific, almost poetic images, Heller evokes the despair of being buried alive with Alzheimer’s both for him the caretaker and his mother the cared-for, his unwillingness to offer up his mother to the assembly line of need-blind medical care, and the feeling of relief, of a debt paid in full, that came with her death. This is must reading for anyone embarking on the journey of caregiver and looking for advice, even as Heller says, “No one can give such advice.” Paul Heller is a Princeton graduate. He is an entrepreneur who left New York City to care for his mother in Pennsylvania.

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First published September 18, 2013