In 1994 writer Dudley Clendinen's mother--a Southern matron of iron will but creaking bones--sold her house and moved to Canterbury Tower, a geriatric apartment building with full services and a nursing wing, on Tampa Bay. There she landed in a microcosm of the New Old Age, filled not just with old Tampa neighbors but also with strangers from across the country. Wealthy, middle class, or barely afloat; Christian, Jewish, or faithless and proud; widowed, or still married; grumpy or dear--they had all come together, at the average age of 86, in search of a last place to live and die. This is an often hilarious, deeply moving look at how the oldest Americans are living with the reality of longer life. Peopled by brave, daffy, memorable characters determined to grow old with dignity, this is a chronicle not just of the last years of the Greatest Generation, but also of the devoted workers who tend to them, and of their children, the hapless Boomers, as they are drawn into an indeterminate old age with their parents.--From publisher description.
|
