Product Description

In 1999 Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the famed aviator and author, moved from her home in Connecticut to the farm in Vermont where her daughter, Reeve, and Reeve's family live. Mrs. Lindbergh was in her nineties and had been rendered nearly speechless years earlier by a series of small strokes that also left her frail and dependent on others for her care. As an accomplished author who had learned to write in part by reading her mother's many books, Reeve was deeply saddened and frustrated by her inability to communicate with her mother, a woman long recognized in her family and throughout the world as a gifted communicator.

No More Words is a moving and compassionate memoir of the final seventeen months of Reeve's mother's life. Reeve writes with great sensitivity and sympathy for her mother's plight, while also analyzing her own conflicting feelings. Anyone who has had to care for an elderly parent disabled by Alzheimer's or stroke will understand immediately the heartache and anguish Reeve suffered and will find comfort in her story.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #508105 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-08
• Released on: 2002-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Amazon.com Review
Her daughter's tender account of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's final 22 months is a fitting epitaph for an author who revealed her inner life with an honesty and sensitivity that have inspired generations of readers since Gift from the Sea was first published in 1955. This new volume also makes a fine companion for Under a Wing, Reeve Lindbergh's previous memoir about her parents' complex marriage and her own struggle to grapple with the legacy of her famous father, Charles Lindbergh. Yet it's not necessary to know anything about Anne's writing or Charles's exploits as an aviator to be moved by No More Words, which chronicles a day-to-day drama of worry, guilt, anger, and unexpected joy that will be familiar to anyone who has cared for an elderly, ailing parent. Drawing on a diary she kept from the time her mother came to live with her in May 1999 until Anne's death at age 94 in February 2001, Reeve Lindbergh deals first and foremost with her shock that her literate, articulate mother no longer had much use for words. "From the beginning of my life," she writes, "everything I understood was made plain to me in her language.... at each moment of my need she spoke the words I needed." But after a series of strokes, Anne spoke less and less, and not everything she said made sense. Reeve had to find meaning for herself; she had to accept her mother's increasing remoteness and take pleasure from the moments when Anne seemed to come back to her. She traces that process in spare, eloquent prose complemented by excerpts from her mother's works: "It was very important to me that her writing voice, too, should be heard," Reeve states. "The truth about this book is that it is not mine but ours." --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly
After suffering several strokes, Anne Morrow Lindbergh (who died this year) spent the last year of her life in Vermont, on the farm of her daughter Reeve's family. Just as Anne undertook Gift from the Sea in 1955 as a spiritual recon, so Reeve (Under a Wing) here explores her feelings about her visibly aging mother. Early on, Reeve dreams she's sitting on a railway bench flanked by two women: the vibrant mother of decades earlier and the ghostly incarnation living with her now. "You just have to take care of her," her "real" mother tells her. "Taking care" is not about feeding and bathing (the domain of some extraordinary Buddhist caregivers), but witnessing her transition from old age into death. Any reader who's cared for an elderly, dying loved one will hear echoes of his or her own wracking doubts. When they're sitting still, staring out into space, we want them to talk or smile, participate "in some way that we can understand." We panic at inappropriate, off-the-wall remarks was it simply theatrical or has another neurological byway collapsed? And the kicker: however much we've done for them, we feel guilty that we can't keep them from dying. With her mother now shunning speech, Reeve too gravitates to a lean, reporting style. Quotations from Anne's writings are apt but brief. And while the reader expects death in the end, it's still wrenching when it comes. (Oct. 11)Forecast: Anne Morrow Lindbergh is popular with female baby boomers (witness the success of Susan Hertog's 2001 biography of her and the continued interest in 1955's Gift from the Sea). A first serial in More magazine, a seven-city author tour and the Lindbergh name will insure strong sales.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Although physically frail and confused, Anne Morrow Lindbergh continued to live at her home in Connecticut until age 93 with round-the-clock care. In 2001, on one of her frequent visits to her daughter, Reeve, in Vermont, she developed pneumonia, and the family decided that she should move into a small house just 100 yards from the main house that was designed and built for her by Reeve's husband. Reeve gathered a team of caregivers to provide care and company for her mother. Then a series of small strokes left Anne mostly silent. When she did talk, her words were not always germane to the conversation or events around her. Reeve, who eloquently recalled her famous parents in Under a Wing (LJ 10/1/98), writes with great compassion for her frail mother, but she does not gloss over her own conflicted emotions and the challenges she faced. Full of insight, humor, and tales of sadness and happiness, this memoir will be especially appreciated by readers struggling to care for their aging parents. Excerpts from Anne Morrow Lindbergh's writings are included. For both biography and gerontology collections.
- Jodith Janes, Cleveland Clinic Foundation Lib.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful Tribute
I have read Reeve Lindbergh's work before in her memoir, "Under A Wing". I was surprised at her candor regarding her father, and what was equally clear was her fondness for her mother. "No More Words", which records the last 17 trying and rewarding months of her mother's life, is a tender tribute that is notable for what it includes and for what it omits.

The only photograph of Mrs. Lindbergh is the one that appears on the cover. The photograph depicts a young woman at the start of what would prove to be a life as fascinating as it was lengthy. The closing months of this woman's life are chronicled above all else with a great deal of respect. This is a most private family event, and just as the book is devoid of any pictures for the voyeur, the narrative too is informative without taking away any of the dignity of her mother. This would seem to be an obvious manner to write of one's parent, but a person does not have to look far to find books written with sales as the first goal, and exploitation of the subject left unconsidered.

Reeve Lindbergh is a poet, she is reflective, and these aspects of her personality provide a narrative that is unique. This book is not simply a diary; it is not a chronological description of the systematic health decline of her mother. It is more of a story that is driven by the limited interactions she was able to have with her mother, and the memories that were either hers or recollections of her mother's life. This is not a sugarcoated story of what was a very trying time. The book is a balanced memoir about how difficult it is to deal with not only the death of a parent, but also the very real difficulties and frustrations that caring for an elderly, ill parent involves. Mrs. Lindbergh had the best care available which took much of the moment-to-moment care off of the family. It did not remove many of the difficulties, and the reader can easily imagine what it would entail to care for a parent with little, or no outside help.

This is a very contemplative book that moves at an associated pace.

A Lovely Tribute...
I had the opportunity to meet Reeve Lindbergh last week at an author event at our local bookstore - she read excerpts of this book and spoke with great joy and humor about her relationship with her mother (and father) despite the difficult few years before her mother's death. This book is a MUST READ for anyone who felt a personal connection with Anne Morrow Lindbergh through her published diaries and letters, or other books.

This is NOT a bedpans, nurses, feeding tubes story filled with morose details about the decline of an aging parent, rather a tender, bittersweet, and often humorous recollection of a much-loved mother and the impact of her life and death upon her daughter and those who surrounded her in her final months and days.

Having adored Anne Morrow Lindbergh's writing, and felt a deep personal connection with her through that writing, this book helped to bring a sort of closure to me. Thank you, Reeve, for sharing your deeply personal reflections of the final chapter of your mother's life.

Simply Lovely
This is a fast reading book concerning Mrs. Charles Lindbergh's last few years of life. Written by youngest Lindbergh sibling, Reeve, she tells of living on her own farm in Vermont, with a smaller house on the property her mother lived in during that time. Reeve Lindbergh is a wonderful writer - she doesn't need the famous last name to prove that. When she isn't writing about her mother, which is riveting for some reason, her writing of anything else in the book has such a fresh, emotional spirit behind her words. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a legend in her own time both in flying, her husband, and her many published works, did not talk much in her last years. It is a story of how the family felt and coped with her condition, letting go of the vibrant mother they once knew. An excellent book for those who have been a caregiver to a parent or sibling. Anne M.L. was such a famous figure, it was both interesting and heartwrenching to have the privilege of reading about her day to day living. Thank you, Reeve Lindbergh, for sharing this story that you could have kept to yourself, but chose to share. It's a book that will be remembered long after it's read.