Looking After: A Son's Memoir

by John Daniel

A poet and an essayist, John Daniel weaves graceful meditations on the nature of memory, identity, aging, and the tenacity of family into this moving account of his mother’s last years. Uneasy in his role as caregiver, Daniel struggles with guilt, embarrassment, and anger over his mother’s transformation. As she loses her memory to Alzheimer’s, he delves into his own in a passionate attempt to remember—for her and for himself—the remarkable history of their lives.

Genres: Memoir

272 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 1997

About the author

Born in South Carolina and raised in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., John Daniel has lived in the West since 1966. After attending and dropping out of Reed College in Portland, Oregon, he worked as a logger, railroad inspector, rock climbing instructor, hod carrier, and poet-in-the-schools. He began to write poetry and prose in the 1970s while living on a ranch in south-central Oregon. In 1982 he received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University, where he then took an M.A. in English/Creative Writing and taught five years as a Jones Lecturer in Poetry and a lecturer in Freshman English. He now makes his living as a writer and itinerant teacher in workshops and writer-in-residence positions around the country. 

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking After is a beautiful and poignant memoir by John Daniel. He writes the intimate details of living with his mother in Portland Oregon as she declines into Alzheimer's Disease and at the same time shares his own journey into adulthood and becoming a man and author.

[Ron Mohring · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book wasn't what I expected it to be: about half of the material is devoted to the writer's introspections about himself, and these chapters don't always dovetail into the presumed main subject: his mother and (mostly) how she lived her last years with Daniel & his wife. Though parts are brilliantly written, I found myself plodding through hoping for more of the good stuff. Toward the end, the writer describes his process of assembling this book and admits that he didn't know how it was going to come together. It really doesn't, in my opinion, though (again) some parts deliver sharp and poignant details & observations that I had to mark with post-its just to re-read and savor. It's just (sigh) a mixed bag.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is as heartfelt a book as I can imagine. At once compassionate and introspective, John Daniel comprehensively captures the experience of seeing a loved one, his mother, through the end stages of life. It's not possible to live through such an experience without self-examination, without the lows of solitary guilt and the highs of shared joy. It's not possible to commit to living in every moment of that experience and to remain unchanged. It's not possible to ignore this book. Please don't.