Mirrored Lives: Aging Children and Elderly Parents

In the first book to deal with the geriatric decline connected to non-terminal illness in old age, Tom Koch takes a sensitive but thorough look at the declining years of his father. The book is a narrative record of an elderly man unable to accept the physical realities of his state. Because it is told by the patient's caregiver, a son, it also chronicles the issues and mechanics of the aging child's role in caring for a parent. Koch defines aging as more than a series of physical symptoms and places the issues of caring and aging within the perspective of socially accepted values; independence, social function, family dynamics, and financial worth. The patient, his physicians and nurses, family and friends all become ciphers in the code by which we define not only aging and the elderly, but time, history, and ourselves. Mirrored Lives offers a social document in which the case of one man and his last years becomes a symbol for all of us.

Koch provides not only a record of the non-terminal decline of an elderly individual--his father--but a perspective which defines the problems of gerontology in a social context. His experiences are a practical example of the psychological aspects of caregiving to the elderly parent and the geriatric decline that the parent experiences--decreased mobility, increasing senility. The book places the community's reactions to the elderly's problems in a social context. Thus, aging is defined as a multigenerational issue, not something which just happens to the patient. Anyone faced with the care and support of an elderly loved one will find Mirrored Lives a thoughtful and sensitive study.