Very Grateful: The Story of My Hundred-Year-Old Mother and Me

VERY GRATEFUL details the last two years of the life of Janet Eberman and her close relationship with her daughter, author Bobbi Fisher. It begins with Janet's last words to Bobbi, just thirteen days before she died, at age one hundred and one. The book documents Bobbi's examination of her life and her relationship with her mother during 2009-2011, as both of them "hold on" and "let go." Bobbi's journal entries and emailed letters to her siblings and her mother, plus interpolated reflections and flashbacks, describe Janet's slow decline as Bobbi's life increasingly revolves around caring for her mother and observing and learning from her mother's faith in God. In the journal excerpts Bobbi also explores the meaning of her own life, her quest for solitude at a cottage she rents by the sea in the winter, her travels to Scotland and Italy, her deepening faith, and the realization of her own aging as she "circles" what it means to be seventy years old. This loving, personal memoir ends after Janet's death, as Bobbi reflects on what she has learned from her mother's last two years and her hopes for the future as she moves on without the mother she has cherished so deeply.

Author: Bobbi Fisher
Publisher: Very Grateful
Published: 08/01/2015
Pages: 142
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.48lbs
Size: 9.02h x 5.98w x 0.33d
ISBN: 9780692488218

About the Author
Bobbi Fisher is known for her many books about teaching elementary school: Joyful Learning in Kindergarten, Thinking and Learning Together, Inside the Classroom, and The Teacher Book (author), as well as Perspectives on Shared Reading and For Reading Out Loud (co-author with her daughter, Emily). After retiring from teaching she earned a Master of Divinity degree from Andover Newton Theological School and for five years was spiritual care counselor for Wayside Hospice, in Wayland, Massachusetts. Bobbi lives in Sudbury, Massachusetts, with her husband, Jim; they have two children and four grandchildren. She is an active member of Memorial Congregational Church, and travels often, especially to the Isle of Iona, in Scotland, and to Florence, Italy. She writes two blogs: www. acottagebythesea.net, about her search for solitude, silence, and simplicity in the midst of a life of family, friends, and community, and www. aprayerdiary.net, about her life of faith.

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