Sunday September 18, 4pm – Non-Fiction
Patricia A. Nugent author of They Live On: Saying Goodbye to Mom and Dad ($12.99)
Nugent has written a series of vignettes portraying the stages of caring for and saying goodbye to a loved one, as seen through the eyes of a daughter and her terminally ill parents.
“We don’t have a secret handshake, but we could. We don’t have a clubhouse or membership dues, officers or bylaws. Yet we are a billion-member secret society with a very steep price for admittance: losing a parent…. Words cannot adequately convey the experience of what it feels like. You can’t even begin to imagine it; you just have to wait until you are inducted. And then long for the days when you were blissfully unaware that the exclusive club even existed.”
— From They Live On: Saying Goodbye to Mom and Dad
“I started reading this book as a physician but soon became a son. It’s a story for each and every one of us with elderly parents. We will share this daughter’s emotional roller coaster of hope, anger, depression, guilt, and gratitude. And universally, we will cry and wonder if it’s too late to change our own relationships.” -Dr. Steven Leveston, Endocrinologist/Internist
“The transcription of my journal became a series of 300 vignettes portraying the stages of caring for and saying goodbye to a loved one, as seen through the eyes of a daughter and her terminally ill parents. The grieving process is similar for any significant loss, although I believe that the intense grief of an adult losing a parent needs a stronger voice to be appreciated in our culture. Most of us will bear witness to our parents’ final days – a task for which I was woefully unprepared”. -Excerpt from the Prologue to They Live On
Patricia A. Nugent is a 2005 MS graduate of the Rensselaer LL&C program. She worked as a teacher and school administrator, and continues to train and consult on issues related to organizational communication. Although she has been published numerous times in professional journals, this is her first creative nonfiction piece to be made available to the general public.
During my 50+ yrs in Nursing profession I experienced families & loved ones loss of eldery parents & thought it would be less stressful when my own parents reached their end of life issues.
Living with my 93 yr old mother is teaching me what those families went through & what I am surprised @ the emotional
rollercoaster I am experiencing. I plan to sign up for your class on journaling in Oct. 2014. TY for this opportunity.