Do I Know You?: Living Through the End of a Parent's Life

A daughter tells the story of a her mother's slide into advanced senility, presenting a portrait of the problems of aging and the difficult choices sometimes faced by adult children

Moskowitz and her sister, Norma, suspect that their 87-year-old mother is steadily becoming less able to take care of herself. Beyond her increasing forgetfulness, her once-spotless apartment needs a good cleaning and she is not eating. Moskowitz and Norma hope it's a passing phase, a mental fog that will lift. But doctors confirm the worst: their mother is in the early stages of senile dementia. As her confusion increases, their mother becomes contentious, even hostile. After much anguish, the sisters put Mom in the last place she wants to be, a nursing home. Their guilt is substantial, but their choices are limited by their mother's quickly deteriorating condition. Through it all, though, their mother is able to keep her dignity, much to Moskowitz's relief. A touching and honest look at one woman's psychological decline and the pain that decline causes her children. Brian McCombie