Book Review - The Long Goodbye, by Patti Reagan

Lessons Patti learned from her father:
"The horse always knows if you're afraid," he would tell me. "You can never hide that; he just feels it. You have to remember that he has no idea he's bigger than you. He's waiting for you to tell him what you want."

About swimming in the ocean, riding the waves, he said, "If you don't turn your back on the wave and trust in your own strength as a swimmer, you'll miss the ride. You'll fall off the back of the wave or else get pounded by it."

...my balance gets shaky only when I get scared.

These excerpts are from the book written by Patti Reagan, the recalcitrant rebellious daughter of President Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, which took him from his family many years before his life expired.

Patti was the spoiled angry daughter, in the eyes of the world. She was rebellious, she had different opinions than her parents, she made different life choices, and was given a bad rap by the nation.

After years of exile, of being the angry daughter, she realizes what she has missed, her parents realize their partnership in missing out of life together, had they worked harder to understand each others diversity.

"Maybe our opposing views could have been a revelation to each of us instead of a battle." Words she wishes she had said to her father.

Regrets. We all have them. We make mistakes. We like to point out the mistakes that others make; as if we are the life expert on the situations that we find ourselves in, rather than that together we are being tested on our reactions to these very circumstances, facing them together.

Great love, the endearing that we experience towards one another, can be simple and complex. Love is not negotiated, nor its intricacies navigated.

Faith forward is the only way. Patti saw the love between her parents, the love of her father toward her mother, keeping him here. Longing to outrun the disease, to leave this world, but his love for her kept him here;
for The Long Goodbye.
The heart that loves, truly, is never the same.

Waiting, the hardest part. She talks about the waiting. "Out past the grief and the horrible, relentless ache, life will settle into some sort of pattern. For now, there is the waiting. It's like counting the seconds after a lightening flash, waiting for the clap of thunder that you know will come, trying to determine how far away the storm is."

Patti found a letter her father had written to her. Her regrets were compounded. His wish was that his family could be reconciled. That with his and her mothers years coming short, they could have their daughter; the memories; the peace they had so long wished for.

Patti said that she learned more about her parents losing them then she had ever known. Losing her father, she found herself. She states: "On your way to losing a loved one, you pick up pieces of your own life and examine them differently."

Her father taught her so many beautiful lessons, in the way that he lived his life. Our nation learned much from the man that he was. She had to share him with us.

I have been told many negative things about Patti Reagan because of the person she was, the struggles she had. This book is healing. It shows her moving on. It is we, as a nation, who continue to place her in her mistakes; who choose suffering.

She has become a better woman; a person of love, of light, and who is not afraid to share what she learned due to publicly slaughtering her image, and tainting the image of her family. I was most impressed by the love that this father had for his daughter, as she was. His kindness, not tolerance. His forgiveness, his hope and faith.

Some of her expressions of living through her fathers disease were heart wrenching to read. The pain of this is so fresh right now, with my own Grandmother and dear Grandfather, my family all suffering the affliction.

"Death is not delicate. I'm trying to cradle my mother's sorrow, be mother to [her]. ...we step out of the shadows and sing lullabies to our parents, melodies recalled from the very childhoods we railed against. We are being invited, by circumstance and by the relentless passage of time, to be more tender, more loving, than we've been in the past. We realize we are nobody's little girl anymore."

She writes of her mother's grieving: "He's here, but in so many ways, he's not. We pluck memories from the years we shared. Words seem frail when the emotions are so huge. She speaks of a future that will be spent missing him."

At one point Patti writes, "you hold on tightly to those around us. Because you never know. This web of sorrow...in the end, God will decide how long he stays, how bad things will get."

Lessons learned about Alzheimer's:
For someone with Alzheimer's, time becomes momentary, immediate.

..there are no ordinary moments.

chunks of time simply vanish

...a thief that steals a human being like nothing else can.

eyes look beyond us

caught up in the game of waiting

Lessons learned about life:
life goes on but it goes on differently

how short this life is and how much beauty can be missed along the way

death isn't an ending; it's just another place

We change along the way, we discover ourselves.

My mother is losing her sole mate.
Patti's mother: "I'm not scared anymore; I just know I'll be so lonely without him...the only answer that I have is to trust in God's wisdom.

You never really know what is going on in another persons life.

"People leave their footprints on this earth by what they leave behind---the bits and pieces of who they were, what they learned, accomplished, created. Often it's through their children. They lay threads at their children's feet, hoping their sons or daughters will chose one and continue weaving the rope that binds one generation to another."

This hope, this pleading, tugged at me.
I feel as though my heart will explode, with memories, with love, with desire to create with all I have personally been given in knowledge and experiences from my grandparents.
May I have the sense to use what I have been given to honor them.

So many books, so little time, so much on my mind.

In the beginning of the book Patti remembers a time when she was a little girl. Going to the ranch with her father, arriving they learned that his favorite horse, Nancy D., had passed away. She looked up at her father through her own tears and saw that he wasn't crying. He was looking up into all the blue and the expression on his face was sweet and soft...and a million miles away.

"Why aren't you crying?" I asked him through my own tears.

He put his hand on my shoulder and met my eyes. "Because," he said, "I'm thinking about all the wonderful times I had with her. We had some great years together."

It was one of my first lessons about death---about looking past it, if only for a few moments, at all the life that went before, all the loveliness and the rich memories. Those are what sustain us, is the lesson my father was trying to impart.

Lessons on losing those we love:
remember the beauty of life that had past

Grieving is a learned art; it doesn't get easier...

no one prepares us for this

We are never complete with losing someone who has been melded to us through birth, or love, or both.


I gained this: Learning to live through death, not die with it. When we lose our loved ones, precious, soft and sweet, we have to remember we can not die with them. We must live on, to honor their goodness, to celebrate their lives, not drown in the despair.

A quote from the movie The Notebook:
Loss has a tendency to claim us, and try to define us.

Patti learned, and I felt in reverberate in me, "in ..death a part of us will die as well and will go with [them]. Parts of me will...ride behind him again, turn down whatever trail he chooses. The teenager whose anger blinded her to the sadness in her father's eyes will soften and take his arm. The woman who is now trying to crowd a lifetime of memories into an embrace, a meeting of eyes, the words "I love you" ---part of her will follow him into the vastness of a world beyond this one, trusting that in death there is also birth."

...there is a lonliness to grief that is inescapable...

I hear the thunder, the storm is not far.

Finally, lessons on trust, on faith:
it happens in God's time, not ours.

Prayers are the purest of secrets, they can be shared by not intruded upon, offered by not commanded.

Would I rail at God, or trust in his compassion?

God will decide how long he stays, how bad things will get.

What if we have a responsibility that we're not living up to?

We have to figure out who we are before we can possibly know what to inherit.

Alzheimer's pulls in the boundaries of the world. ...more shadows, less sunlight...

"My whole world is upside down now."

And in the end:
He looks past us now to things we can't see yet.

The best I can do for him now ---be a calm presence beside him,...

My father lives in the moment now.



For me:
Memories...interesting summation...shall I say, memories of my Grandfather, my Grandmother. The love I have for them, and feel from them for me.

Memories are the last enduring connection to our loved ones.

When someone you love dies, you see the imprint all around you. You shape your life around those imprints, with the life they lived, they showed you the truth. Faith. It is on the armband Gavin gave to Grandma, she could wear it in the temple, it is white. Faith is truly all we have; with love, patience, long-suffering, and now.

As I was reading, finishing the book, lost in my emotion; crying, I realized the pillow I was resting on was held in a case my Grandmother lovingly, patiently stitched, peace and rest; what she would wish for me, for all of us.
May we honor her with living our lives.

Great read; hard, but excellent.