Bequest and Betrayal

How do we live with our parents after their death? How do we tell their story when they are gone? These questions are the subject of Nancy K. Miller's moving new book, Bequest and Betrayal: Memoirs of a Parent's Death. Melding the details of her own experience with the familial biographies of well-known contemporary writers, Miller recreates a common experience - the loss of a father or a mother - and exposes the often tortuous paths of mourning and attachment that we follow in the wake of loss. In the process, she offers pieces of personal history, revealing the mixed emotions provoked by her mother's sudden death from cancer and her father's painful struggle with Parkinson's disease. Memoirs about the loss of parents show how enmeshed in the family plot we have been and the price of our complicity in its stories. The death of parents forces us to rethink our lives, to reread ourselves. We read for what we need to find. Sometimes, we also find what we didn't know we needed.