A review by jdscott50
A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
Nicole Chung brought insights into transracial adoption with her memoir All You Can Ever Know. She has a new memoir out. In A Living Remedy, Chung's parents are ill and pass away. She recounts the agony of having sick and dying parents. Without health insurance or support, her parents ignore their health concerns until one day, her father goes to sleep and doesn't wake up. Her mother died of cancer during the Covid pandemic, and she could not be with her when she passed.
This one was a hard one to read. As a child, having to coerce parents to do anything is an impossible task. Her father refuses to go to the doctor. Only after much cajoling does he apply for Medicaid. When he is refused, his price is hurt, and he doesn't reapply. He eventually does get help but then passes away suddenly. After burying their father, the mother is diagnosed with cancer. The pandemic hits, and then she cannot visit. She barely has one phone call with her before she passes. She watches the services virtually. It reflects on her parents, their inner life once she moved out, and the shortcomings of the American healthcare system.
Favorite Passages:
But in this country, unless you attain extraordinary
wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you’d hoped. You will learn to live with the specific,
hollow guilt of those who leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone else with them.
Grief is a chasm, one I can lose myself in without trying. And yet it’s not quite the unyielding abyss I feared it would be.
I thought they would feel farther away—that they would both be lost to me, and that it was what I deserved. But now, sometimes, I feel they are so close, as if they were only in the next room, as if one of them might hear me if I
called. It’s not a presence, exactly. But not an absence, either
This one was a hard one to read. As a child, having to coerce parents to do anything is an impossible task. Her father refuses to go to the doctor. Only after much cajoling does he apply for Medicaid. When he is refused, his price is hurt, and he doesn't reapply. He eventually does get help but then passes away suddenly. After burying their father, the mother is diagnosed with cancer. The pandemic hits, and then she cannot visit. She barely has one phone call with her before she passes. She watches the services virtually. It reflects on her parents, their inner life once she moved out, and the shortcomings of the American healthcare system.
Favorite Passages:
But in this country, unless you attain extraordinary
wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you’d hoped. You will learn to live with the specific,
hollow guilt of those who leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone else with them.
Grief is a chasm, one I can lose myself in without trying. And yet it’s not quite the unyielding abyss I feared it would be.
I thought they would feel farther away—that they would both be lost to me, and that it was what I deserved. But now, sometimes, I feel they are so close, as if they were only in the next room, as if one of them might hear me if I
called. It’s not a presence, exactly. But not an absence, either