18 Sep 2008
Hearing Two Voices
Walking Mom Home is a book that my mother (a”h) and I conceived together when she was dying of esophageal cancer and I was taking care of her. Our experiences during that time were so profound, so enlivening and so heart-stretching that we wanted to share them with others who would one day walk the same road after us. As it turned out, my mother died before the book could be written. So the task of completing the project fell to me.
As originally conceived, the book would have been written in two distinct voices and from two perspectives. But because I was left to write it alone, it was up to me to convey both of our realities. Needing to stand both in my mother’s shoes and my own in writing this book helped me to appreciate our two worlds even more and, I think, to understand them even better than I might have otherwise.
Having had this experience, I wondered whether it might be helpful in life for mothers and daughters to try sometimes to tell the story of whatever is happening between them from the other’s perspective as well as their own. It could be an interesting and eye-opening exercise – one that could change lives and relationships long before the final journey.
