My Father's Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents

By Jonathan G. Silin

Book Overview

My Father's Keeper is the moving story of Jonathan Silin, a gay man in midlife who learned to care for his elderly parents as a series of life-threatening illnesses forced them to make the difficult transition from being independent to being reliant on their son. Their new needs and unrelenting demands brought them into intimate daily contact and radically transformed what had been a difficult and emotionally fraught relationship. My Father's Keeper chronicles the unexpected ways in which the ideas and skills Silin acquired as an early childhood educator, a specialist in life span development, and a compassionate witness to the devastation of the HIV/AIDS crisis came together with his interest in human psychology to deeply inform his thinking about the dramatic changes in his family's life and increasingly influence his role as his father's (and mother's) keeper. Through the months and years of his parents' decline, Silin reflects on their history as a family, recalling the pain of his father's psychological struggles through midlife and the uneasy, imperfect process of accepting his son as a gay man and accepting his son's partner into the family. My Father's Keeper is a book about beginnings and endings, loss and redemption, the ethics of intervention, and the pressing needs of two extremely vulnerable populations.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807079650
• ISBN13: 9780807079652
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Have You Been There Yet?

I've been there. Caregiving is maddening. This work actually protrays the love and insantity that go with the job.

My Fathers Keeper Book Review

My Father's Keeper is the story of a gay man in midlife who must learn to care for his elderly parents when their health begins to fail. The novel takes you through his life roles as he undergoes a shift in responsibilities. We are taken through the struggles that both Silin and his parents must endure as becomes the caretaker and his parents accept their new limitations. This story conveys Silins struggles with distancing his himself from his parents enough that he can understand them, but not absorb the anger caused by their illness. The ultimate message that we are left with is what it means to be a caregiver to the very end. Silin's work is thoughtful and honest. He offers a series of valuable reports using his experiences from childhood, education, parenting, mental health, old age, death, and forgiveness. This is a unique, well written story that provides us with what may lie ahead.