"Ungrateful Mother" and Proud Daughter.

Sheila Solomon Klass

Perri Klass is a remarkable pediatrician and writer.  Last year, her mother, Sheila S. Klass, an English professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, wrote a remarkable piece in the NY Times entitled “A Very Ungrateful Old Lady.

 It begins:

“I am a legally blind octogenarian. I have wonderful adult children who often help me, but I can never accept their help gracefully.

It is a terrible thing to be a burden. They say I am not, but I know better. Perhaps many of you have parents like me."

Sheila Klass died on March 26, 2014.

Her daughter, Perri  had a follow-up piece in the May 28, New York Times, called “She Wasn’t So Ungrateful, After All.”

"My mother’s essay resonated with many readers, reminded them of their aging parents or of themselves. I’m not sure that everyone is ready for certain kinds of honesty from people toward the end of life, trapped in bodies that are progressively betraying them after decades of service, facing the future with the daily reminders that come from losing friends and contemporaries, perhaps picking up messages in the air on special frequencies not audible to the rest of us."

 

Perri Klass

These essays are book-ends – both are keepers.  They will give you insights you are unlikely to get from “The Literature.”

See: A Very Ungrateful Old Lady
See: She Wasn't So Ungrateful, After All
Sheila Solomon Klass Obituary