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Chapter One -- I DEMAND AN AUTOPSY! -- I was sitting at my desk plowing through bills when the phone rang. My stepsister, Cathy, never called unless we had "problems." Her father, Walter Huber (age eighty-two), and my mother, Addie Henry (age eighty-one), after a dramatic and sometimes bruising courtship, married a few years ago. Not one of the eight offspring (me and my four siblings, Cathy and her two) in our newly blended family was pleased about this union, but there was nothing we could do about it. After all, our parents were grown-ups. -- At present, Addie and Walter were escaping the New Jersey winter, vacationing in West Palm Beach, Florida, where, Cathy informed me, Mom stumbled and fell and hit her head on the curb. A stranger, seeing the two old people in a state of emergency (a fairly common sight in Florida), kindly called an ambulance for Mom and packed Walter into a taxi. -- The ambulance paramedic, recoiling from Mother's ninety-proof breath, scribbled etoh all over her medical forms. etoh is medical jargon for ethanol. In Mom's case, it meant martinis. -- While Mom was out cold, the ER staff tried to pry information out of Walter, who was upset and couldn't remember anything. Suddenly, Mom sat bolt upright on the gurney and yelled, "I demand an autopsy!" before passing out again. -- "I'm not getting an autopsy!" Walter roared. "You have to be dead to get an autopsy!" Apparently, after the nurses got him calmed down, they shipped him off to an emergency Alzheimer's unit (which they also have in Florida), where he had been locked up for three days before he finally divulged Cathy's number. She was now on her way to retrieve him. -- I called St. Stephen's Hospital and finally got Mom. "Oh, hello, dearie," she said brightly, as though I just happened to call as she bounded off the tennis court. "Isn't this a bore? I could leave right now, but to be safe I thought I'd get a few tests done." She sounded peachy. "A lam ...

A fresh, funny new voice, Meg Federico showcases her keen eye for the absurd in this poignant, hilarious, and timely account of one daughter's tumultuous journey caring for her aging parents. -- When Meg Federico's eighty-year-old mother and newly minted step-father were forced to accept full-time home care, she imagined them settling into a Norman-Rockwellian life of docile dependency. With a family of her own and a full time career in Nova Scotia - a thousand miles away from her parents - Federico hoped they would be able to take care of themselves for the most part, and call on their children when they really needed them - but of course that's not quite what happens. -- As she watches with horror from the sidelines, Federico's parents turn into terrible teens. Fighting off onslaughts of dementia and Alzheimer's disease, Addie and Walter, forbidden by doctors to drink, conspire to order cases of scotch by phone; Addie's attendant accuses the evening staff of midnight voodoo; Walter's inhibitions decline as dementia increases and mail-order sex aides arrive at the front door. The list of absurdities goes on and on as Federico tries to take some control over her parents' lives - and her own. -- This is a story for the huge generation - nearly 76 million people - now dealing with the care of their parents. You'll laugh and cry as you read this powerful and important debut. -- From the Hardcover edition.