I was asked to review Susan Cerulean’s latest book, I Have Been Assigned the Single Bird, probably because, like the author, I cared for and watched my mother die from Alzheimer’s and, like the author, I find Grace in nature. I wondered how she could possibly weave together her experience of being with her father as he declined due to dementia and her concern for the environmental degradation of the Earth, as represented by the lone oystercatcher she was assigned to watch.
She does it superbly. She writes honestly, clearly, eloquently, exactly, and poetically. Her words are like the graceful white pelicans she describes.
She is “one daughter caring for one father. One woman attuned to a single wild bird while the planet is burning.”
I, like the author, thought I could manage my mother’s disease competently when she first came to live with me. But unlike Cerulean, I could not find the words to describe why, after one year, I could no longer bear it. Cerulean’s words – “the chaos dismantling his brain and body would overwhelm us.” This is exactly what happened to me. We were overwhelmed.
I am glad to see the recognition the author gives to some of the dedicated nursing home aids and paid caregivers for the underpaid and difficult work they do. She “sensed a common steel to their spines and a loving kindness in their hearts.”
In the end, the author learned how to be with her father’s dementia; she learned simply to be with him. I learned to be in the moment with my mother. As Cerulean watches an exhausted shorebird die, 4 vigil birds show her what to do - simply be there. She discovers her will to renew her resolve to work on behalf of shorebirds.
Read this book if you have or have had a loved one with dementia. Read it if you are concerned about the decline of birds and other wildlife, of habitat loss, of global warming. She will not tell you what to do but she will tell you to not turn away from it.