Letters from Madelyn: Chronicles of a Caregiver

Madelyn Kubin was a seventy-year-old Kansas farm wife. She appeared to be fragile because of her thinning white hair, macular degeneration, osteoporosis, congestive heart failure, and severe hearing loss. But when her husband Quentin suffered a debilitating stroke, she was forced to summon physical, emotional, and spiritual strengths she didn't know she possessed in order to care for him at home.
She managed her isolation, loneliness, and stress by going to her computer, disengaging her emotional monitor, and writing letters to her daughter Elaine. Madelyn's story of faith, courage, and love is told through her unflinchingly honest and surprisingly funny letters written in real time over the course of six-and-a-half years. She wrote unabashedly about her anger, guilt, depression, and grief. She also wrote about her frustration with Quentin's repeated requests for her to arrange a "sex date" with the girl he had taken to his high school senior prom sixty years earlier. Although she prayed every day that she would be a willing channel for God's love and compassion, there were plenty of days she felt like telling God to go find himself another servant. In spite of her physical and emotional challenges, Madelyn proved that it is possible, even in the very worst end-of-life situations, to experience mental and spiritual growth and to find joy and happiness from within.