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A review by eileen9311
No More Words: A Journal of My Mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh by Reeve Lindbergh
4.0
This was Reeve Lindbergh’s description of how she shared the final months of her famous mother’s life. In her later years, Anne Morrow Lindbergh was stricken with Alzheimer’s and left basically speechless following a series of small strokes. ‘Age and illness have silenced her now, and she lives in silence to such a degree that speech, when it does come, seems unfamiliar to her, her voice hoarse and thick with the difficulty brought on by disuse, a rustiness of pipes and joints too long unlubricated by their once normal flow,’ The family decided that it would be best to move her to Reeve’s farm in Vermont. There, surrounded by caretakers, Anne spent the last part of her life in her own house, a short walk from Reeve’s.
It seems courageous and generous of the author to share such an intimate journey. She confesses her feelings of helplessness, and admits to being unnerved by the quiet from a mother with such a great gift for language. While painful at times, there was humor at the seeming absurdities, and warmth, and above all a deep, abiding love. Mother and daughter had a common bond in their love of nature. The antics of the farm animals are a frequent source of delight for Reeve, and her passion for gardening is clear! ‘I watch for deer at the edges of the fields at dusk, while I’m taking laundry off the clothesline, and when I see them, the sight brings tears to my eyes. I don’t know why. I garden in my perennial beds in the late afternoons with an eagerness that is close to gluttony. Digging and weeding and planting and tending my flowers, all this serves some primitive instinct, so that I feel much more like a pig rooting for truffles than a woman staking her delphiniums, or pulling up witch grass…..’
This was beautifully written. There were flashbacks, and contrasts, while Reeve remembered her mother as she’d once been, and accepted the present. ‘In a situation like mine, there is memory and there is frustration, and there is grief and there is guilt. In fact, there is more guilt than anything else.’ I found a great deal of comfort, as well as wisdom within these pages.
It seems courageous and generous of the author to share such an intimate journey. She confesses her feelings of helplessness, and admits to being unnerved by the quiet from a mother with such a great gift for language. While painful at times, there was humor at the seeming absurdities, and warmth, and above all a deep, abiding love. Mother and daughter had a common bond in their love of nature. The antics of the farm animals are a frequent source of delight for Reeve, and her passion for gardening is clear! ‘I watch for deer at the edges of the fields at dusk, while I’m taking laundry off the clothesline, and when I see them, the sight brings tears to my eyes. I don’t know why. I garden in my perennial beds in the late afternoons with an eagerness that is close to gluttony. Digging and weeding and planting and tending my flowers, all this serves some primitive instinct, so that I feel much more like a pig rooting for truffles than a woman staking her delphiniums, or pulling up witch grass…..’
This was beautifully written. There were flashbacks, and contrasts, while Reeve remembered her mother as she’d once been, and accepted the present. ‘In a situation like mine, there is memory and there is frustration, and there is grief and there is guilt. In fact, there is more guilt than anything else.’ I found a great deal of comfort, as well as wisdom within these pages.