Bringing Bubbe Home: A Memoir of Letting Go Through Love and Death - Softcover

Zaslow, Debra Gordon

4.36

33 ratings by Goodreads

9781940468020: Bringing Bubbe Home: A Memoir of Letting Go Through Love and Death

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1940468027 ISBN 13: 9781940468020

Publisher: White Cloud Press, 2014

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Debra Zaslow was humming along on baby-boomer autopilot, immersed in her life as a professional storyteller, wife of a Rabbi, and mother of two teenagers when she felt compelled to bring her 103-year-old grandmother, Bubbe, who was dying alone in a nursing facility, home to live and die with her family. Zaslow had no idea if she would have the emotional stamina to midwife Bubbe to the other side.

Bringing Bubbe Home is the story of their time together in Bubbe’s last months, mingled with scenes from the past that reveal how her grandmother’s stories of abuse, tenacity, and survival have played out through the generations of women in the family. Debra watches her expectations of a perfect death dissolve in the midst of queen-size diapers, hormonal teenagers and volatile caregivers, while the two women sit soul-to-soul in the place between life and death. As she holds her grandmother’s gnarled hand and traces the lines of her face, Debra sees her own search for mothering reflected in her grandmother’s eyes. When Bubbe finally dies, something in Debra is born: the possibility to move into the future without the chains of the past.

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About the Author:

Acclaimed writer and nationally known storyteller Debra Zaslow has appeared at the National Storytelling Festival and has been a keynote speaker at dozens of women’s conferences. She lives in Ashland, OR.

Review:

This courageous, poignant, and truthful book will give you an experience that will never leave you. You will become wiser in the reading, shocked and compassionate as love rises to the challenge of tending to life's end.
Jean Houston, author A Mythic Life

Heartfelt and often humorous, Bringing Bubbe Home offers a keen and compassionate account of the love, dread, exhaustion, devotion, and revelation that come when Zaslow opens her home and her heart to her dying grandmother. With the true talent of a storyteller, Debra Zaslow takes us on a journey of self-doubt, self-discovery, and, finally, reconciliation as she explores what it means to remember . . . and to be remembered.
Kim Barnes, author of In the Wilderness

Unable to bear seeing her Russian-born, 103-year-old grandmother die in a nursing home, Zaslow makes the decision to care for her during her final months. Bringing Bubbe Home is deeply compassionate, but unflinching. This book chronicles the realities of the body, the demands of our emotions, and the promise of the spirit. The beauty here is hard-won and authentic.”
Sue William Silverman, author of Love Sick

Debra Zaslow offers insightful and poignant perspectives on family relationships. She has a natural ear for dialogue and captures the dynamics of taking care of an elder, her grandmother, along with taking care of the teenage children in the same home. Reading the memoir made me feel part of the entire experience!
Zaslow profoundly sums it all up near the end of her memoir, "The past and present travel with us, tracing parallel lines . . . . My roots are still tangled in Bubbe's past, the edges forever blurred." What they lived through remains in my sense memory as I traveled with Zaslow and her Bubbe. Bringing Bubbe Home, a form of an "Ethical Will," is a beautiful tribute to her Bubbe and the wisdom learned that can be transmitted through the generations.
Peninnah Schram, author of Jewish Stories one Generation Tells Another

Debra Zaslow takes us on an intimate journey, as profound as it is warm-hearted and full of nourishment for the soul. You may find yourself laughing and crying at once, and tucking away seeds of wisdom for future use.
Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, author of With Roots in Heaven and The Receiving: Reclaiming Jewish Women's Wisdom

Bringing Bubbe Home, is full of wisdom, humor, love, and the reality and comfort of family. I loved everything about it.
Ruth Bell Alexander, co-author of Our Bodies Ourselves, principal author of Changing Bodies, Changing Minds

This book presents a raw, loving, intimate glimpse into the world of critical home caregiving. Swirling through the experience are dense layers of family dynamics, memories, and traumas reaching back generations. Debra Gordon Zaslow, is courageous, conflicted, caring, loving, joyful, and exhausted. Readers will be drawn into the world of personal caregiving and its ramifications upon all our lives.
Cherie Karo Schwartz, storyteller and author of Circle Spinning: Jewish Turning and Returning Tales

Bringing Bubbe Home offers insightful and poignant perspectives on family relationships as the author captures the dynamics of taking care of an elder, while taking care of teenage children in the same home. Reading the memoir made me feel part of the entire experience. As Debra Gordon Zaslow profoundly sums it all up near the end, The past and present travel with us, tracing parallel lines . . . My roots are still tangled in Bubbe's past, the edges forever blurred.” Bringing Bubbe Home, a form of an Ethical Will, is a beautiful tribute to her Bubbe and the wisdom that can be transmitted through the generations.
Peninnah Schram, author of Jewish Stories one Generation Tells Another

This book becomes impossible to put down. Necessary truths and family secrets are revealed in the mature voice of a world-class storyteller. I immediately told friends to read this with the intent of a deep discussion. Bringing Bubbe Home is brilliantly confrontational, leading us to know ourselves and ask, Could we?’ and Should we?’
Rabbi Goldie Milgram, co-editor of Mitzvah Stories: Seeds for Inspiration and Learning

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