This is the Way We Say Goodbye

Sooner or later, many of us will care for our aging parents. Yet often we feel isolated and overwhelmed while doing it. This haunting collection of personal essays explores the uneasy balance between family and self. As the authors learn how to face the realities of aging, they reveal their own ambivalence about care-taking, the adjustment when a parent and child switch places, and the challenges of staying compassionate throughout the messiness of life and death.

Pat MacEnulty is the author of several novels, a short story collection and her recent memoir Wait Until Tomorrow: A Daughter’s Memoir. She delivers workshops on transformative writing and various aspects of writing craft. For information about Pat's workshops and other books, visit her website: www.patmacenulty.com.

Tamara Titus’s short stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in literary magazines around the country, including Glimmer Train Stories, Sou’wester, and Rock & Sling. She is a 2009 recipient of the North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship Award in fiction, and is currently at work on a novel set in the former national leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana.

This Is the Way We Say Goodbye is available exclusively at feministpress.org.