When the Cranes Fly South Lisa Ridzen Book Review

This book should be required reading for anyone caring for anyone in the final stages of their life. No plot spoilers here but on a sadness scale, it’s a very high tissue rating. But it’s SO good.

I didn’t mean to read a sad book but it has a dog on the cover … what can I say?

It’s the (life) story of Bo who is in his 90s and in the last few months of life. Bo is the narrator so everything we hear is from his perspective. Are the carers who come to his house four times a day kind or unkind? We only hear Bo’s views. His only son wants to rehome his father’s dog – his dog Sixten. Will he or won’t he? Is this kind or unkind? And for whom? The dog? The anxious son? The dad?

Almost more than the answers to those questions – which I won’t reveal- is the fact that Bo helps us to understand how all the things we do and/or say around the dying can be misunderstood, unintentionally hurtful. It also really helped me undestand why sometime dying people are so damn angry.

Oh the agony of deep feelings left unexpressed! But when you know Bo’s story you kind of get why saying the simple things (I’m proud of you) is so very, very hard. Although the book might not have much of a plot, it does contain a lot of story, the whole of Bo’s life crops up in dreams and memories and the writer shows how easily these come to the surface through everyday interactions. Bo may be moving through his last days on the planet but in his heart and mind he is ceaselessly moving over and around the past.

The saddest sentence in the book might have been “I’ve tried so hard to rid myself of my father but he’s still right there inside me, causing trouble” – this from a man in his 90s!

The unsentimental description of the small daily humiliations of being cared for mattered hugely. I still can’t decide if I liked or disliked the son or the father but I’m grateful to have had a very tricky question raised but probably not answered: “Is it ever okay to make a decision ‘in someone’s best interests’ if you know it’s not what they want?

Note to self: before I get much older buy several copies and give it to anyone who might end up caring for me!