Photo: Thinkstock

The elderly father of writer Gina Frangello is like no other ailing parent you've ever met in, as she describes in her "saying good bye to the ailing parent" memoir. He's convinced mice are eating his toenails. He stockpiles Entenmann's pastries. He's also in Frangello's words, a "hero."

As she writes: "He was trained to drive a tank in World War II, but his ulcer and bad back got him sent home before he could be deployed overseas.  Instead, his heroism took place on quieter grounds." Frangello goes on to describe an incident at a Target dining area, when her father saw some kids who were clearly hungry, and told the person working at the counter to give them all the food they wanted.

In recounting this and many other compulsively readable anecdotes, Frangello has created a tribute to her father that is sensitively nuanced, achingly ambivalent. Her father is a fascinating, difficult character who has suffered from mental illness, and her relationship with him is simultaneously close and distant, loving and exasperated. Her essay on The Nervous Breakdown is really an exploration of the question "What is love?"—and it's a must-read for anyone who has ever had to confront death, to experience grief, to love truly and deeply. In other words for all of us.

More:
Caring for Aging Parents
Home Safety for the Elderly