Making An Exit: A Mother-daughter Drama With Alzheimer's, Machine Tools, And Laughter - Hardcover

Frank and funny, an unexpected love story of a once-resentful daughter, a self-centered mother, and a ten-year battle with Alzheimer's

At a time when such things were uncommon, Elinor Fuchs's mother, Lillian, divorced her husband, took back her maiden name, left young Elinor to be raised by grandparents, and moved, alone, to Washington, D.C. She traveled the world selling automotive equipment and paramilitary gear to foreign governments, gave fabulous parties, and "in any given room, took up all the air there was." With her stunning looks and financial drive, Lillian was a figure to admire, not a mother to love. Shunted aside, Fuchs determined early to despise her mother's values and, once in college, to keep her distance.

Making an Exit is the affecting account of what happened afterward, during the last years of Lillian's life. Following her mother's diagnosis with Alzheimer's, Fuchs finds herself in the role of caretaker. She begins to supervise her mother's life; then as the disease progresses, she becomes her mother's mother-dressing her, bathing her, feeding her. Lil changes, too-filled with new warmth, the word "love" now regularly crosses her lips. And through the fantastic poetry in the disintegration of Lillian's language, Fuchs comes to know her mother in a way she never did as a child.

In pitch-perfect prose, Making an Exit paints a picture of a parent's decline that is not the conventional narrative of aging and loss, but a story of discovery and devotion. "The last ten years," writes Fuchs, "they were our best."

Elinor Fuchs, a professor at the Yale School of Drama, is the author of an award-winning play and major works of criticism, including The Death of Character. A nationally recognized theater critic, Fuchs wrote for The Village Voice for more than ten years, and has also contributed to The New York Times, Vogue, and American Theatre. She lives in Brooklyn.