August 2, 2011, 12:03 PM - By PAULA SPAN
When there’s radio silence from Chuck Ross for more than two months, loyal readers like me start to fret.
“Life With Father,” the blog Mr. Ross writes from Cape Cod, Mass., where he lives with and cares for his 89-year-old father, is a strikingly thoughtful and clear-eyed account of the ways in which family caregiving can upend one’s life.
Since I first wrote about the blog in January 2010, Mr. Ross has told readers about his father’s encounters with hospitals and rehab facilities and an array of doctors. He’s discussed his maneuvering to have his dad’s doctor get his driver’s license revoked after a scary near-accident, and described his father’s smoldering anger this spring when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts finally obliged.
The younger Mr. Ross is disarmingly honest about his own anger, an admission that serves, he writes, as an antidote to people’s tendency “to turn the caregiving experience into some sort of Norman Rockwell depiction of the virtues of compassion.”
He posts intermittently. When things are going well, Mr. Ross manages to check in three or four times a month; when work and caregiving obligations pile up, his dispatches dwindle. But “Life With Father” had gone silent since May 3, and I found myself wondering what was going on.
But Mr. Ross has resurfaced. As usual, he’s wise and reflective (and angry, and human). Take a look.
http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/
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