I’ll Be Seeing You: A Memoir

Perhaps the most moving memoir you’ll ever read, especially if you are or have ever been part of that “sandwich” generation, caught between trying help your adult children and your aging parents. As always, Berg writes with grace and humor (and I’ve read probably a dozen or more of her books), but because of the sensitive subject of I’LL BE SEEING YOU, I found I had to keep putting the book aside for a time, remembering the last difficult months, weeks and days of my own mother, who died seven years ago at the age of 96. Because Berg pulls no punches here, in a book based on her very frank and intimate diary of the last years of her frail and aging parents, and the awful, wrenching decisions made in moving them from their St Paul home of forty-five years into a nearby assisted living facility. Her dad, at 90, was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, which complicated things even more. Variously wracked wirh guilt, anger and sadness, Berg spent much of her time for those years flying or driving back and forth from her home in Chicago, doing her best to help her sister who lived closer to her parents. In telling her story, we also get glimpses of the author’s childhood (she was an Army brat who moved often) and youth (a college dropout who traveled to California with one of her boyfriends to sing in a band), as well as a failed marriage with two daughters, a nursing job, and regrets over subsequent relationships, feelings exacerbated when compared to her parents’ own love story of nearly seventy years. Because this is a memoir of the very best kind – painfully honest, sometimes funny, but mostly – at least for me – heartbreakingly sad. Because reading Elizabeth Berg’s story was a lot like sitting across the kitchen table from a dear friend as she spilled her guts about how guilty she felt, and how painful this whole thing was, trying to be responsible without being callous or controlling; understanding but firm, while all the time her heart was breaking, watching her parents’ inevitable decline. It’s just so damn SAD, ya know? Berg confides that she agonized over whether this should even BE a book, but some of her closest confidants urged her to publish it, saying it “would help people” who had gone through the same thing. And I concur. I still experience pangs of guilt over my own mom’s last days in a nursing home, even though I visited often and tried my best to be attentive and a good son. And maybe these feelings will never go away completely, but Elizabeth, your friends were right. This book DID help. I know it was difficult to write, and my heart goes out to you. But thank you so much for sharing your story. It was, and will be, a balm to so many. Bless you. My very highest recommendation.

– Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

I dont know how often a chance comes along to read a memoir of an author whose fiction you enjoy. It gives you a glimpse into their world. Their real world. In this case, this is Elizabeth Bergs memoir ILL BE SEEING YOU about her parents descent into their later years and how she cared for them.

You can tell that the notion of writing this book was not easy. To share her parents story, while they were still living, to reveal their lives at the point of their decline. She even questions herself. Would she want her children to write such a book about her?

Her father is suffering from Alzheimers and life is becoming increasingly difficult for her mother. Her mothers frustration is growing. Watching her husband of almost 70 years slowly fading. Becoming forgetful and so dependent on her, when she is not ready for the place he is heading toward. It should be noted that Berg admires the love that her parents shared throughout their lives affection for each other with such sweetness, as demonstrated in the kiss that her father gave to her mother at the start and end of each day. And many years later, when her mother chose to hang on to a memento that her father crafted at the VA hospital, simply because her husband made it.

Berg and her sister are trying to manage their parents care. Her sister lives close by, Berg a longer drive away. They manage. But there are many obstacles. Mainly their parents. Feelings from long ago arise and they are hard to put away like you might with remnants from the attic. Berg seems to handle things in a way we all wish we could.

Not only is the author struggling with what was happening to her parents but with the way in which her mother is treating her father.

This is by no means a breeze to read. You might see your own parents in the pages or fear for your future. Or perhaps you never had the chance to experience your parents reaching old age and this offers a glimpse into what might have been. Even if illness is not imminent or caring for the elderly is not on the horizon, it feels like a necessary book. Bergs loving stories about her parents, tales of living in the moment, and accepting that the past is the past, offers something to hold on to it with affection. It’s real and meaningful.

Heartwarming family story. Hit home for me.

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