Which is harder to come to terms with: a 23-room clapboard mansion filled to bursting with “stuff,” or 60-plus years of complicated family relationships? Plum Johnson tackles both in They Left Us Everything Kmsauto office 365. , a memoir that’s both humorous and thoughtful.
An artist and former publisher, Johnson doesn’t seem particularly well suited to preside over the emptying of the rambling lakefront house in Oakville, Ontario, when her widowed mother dies at 93. But she tackles the task with gusto, moving in for well over a year (the original plan was six weeks) and getting down to the business of making it presentable enough to put on the market.
They Left Us Everything is a funny, touching memoir about the importance of preserving family history to make sense of the past and nurturing family bonds to safeguard the future.
- Items from childhood trigger difficult memories of her eccentric family growing up in the 1950s and '60s, but unearthing new facts about her parents helps her reconcile those relationships, with a more accepting perspective about who they were and what they valued. They Left Us Everything.
- Author Plum Johnson's memoir 'They Left Us Everything' draws a family portrait centered around the mementos and artifacts that make up a person's life.
It should be noted that Johnson’s mother was a character, in every sense of the word. She’s very much alive in the hilarious first chapter, which baby boomers caring for elderly parents can instantly relate to, and remains a strong presence throughout the book. So, for that matter, does Johnson’s father, who ran the family with an iron fist until falling victim to Alzheimer’s disease. Inevitably, Johnson’s clearing out of the family home becomes intertwined with better understanding her parents.
Some things (plastic bananas, old oxygen tanks, etc.) simply get tossed, while others are divvied up among siblings in a ritual akin to the National Football League draft.
But rest assured, there are plenty of treasures—chief among them a trove of 2,000 letters written by Johnson’s mother, plus wartime letters between her parents. Understanding was there all along, it turns out, somewhere between the canned tomatoes and the boxes of National Geographic magazines.
ALSO IN BOOKPAGE:Read our Q&A with Johnson about They Left Us Everything.
This article was originally published in the August 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
After almost twenty years of caring for elderly parents — first for their senile father, then for their cantankerous ninety-three-year-old mother — author Plum Johnson and her three younger brothers experience conflicted feelings of grief and relief when their mother, the surviving parent, dies.
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Now they must empty and sell the beloved family home, which hasn't been de-cluttered in more than half a century. Twenty-three rooms bulge with history, antiques and oxygen tanks. Plum remembers her loving but difficult parents who could not have been more different: the British father, a handsome, disciplined patriarch who nonetheless could not control his opinionated, extroverted Southern-belle wife who loved tennis and gin gimlets. The task consumes her, becoming more rewarding than she ever imagined.
Items from childhood trigger memories of her eccentric family growing up in a small town on the shores of Lake Ontario in the 1950s and 60s. But unearthing new facts about her parents helps her reconcile those relationships with a more accepting perspective about who they were and what they valued. (From Penguin Canada)
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From the book
The night before I turn sixty-three, I'm looking in the mirror, pulling up my sagging jawline up to my ears, listening to voicemails on speakerphone. Three are from Mum: Woocommerce.
'Happy birthday m'darlin'!'
'Promise you'll drive out first thing tomorrow!'
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'Damn this machine! Call me!'
Mum is ninety-three, and these are her messages just since dinner. Nineteen years, one month, and twenty-six days of eldercare have brought me to my knees. But first thing next morning, I crawl to my car, hack at the ice on my windshield, and slump into the front seat with the heater cranked up.
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From They Left Us Everything by Plum Johnson ©2014. Published by Penguin Canada.
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