incarcerati incarceration, a lot of that happened with lem bias. and look at the books, these are the way that etan can get messages out, what going on. it's not about changing everybody's finds to think a certain way. it's locking at things, and make a decision yourself whether it's right or wrong and whatever it is you believed in. we hope you enjoyed this. we appreciate your support. thank you very much. [applaus [applause]. [inaudible conversations] good afternoon, everyone, good afternoon, and thank you for coming to listen to this

presentation. my name is robin marcus and i am just thrilled to be interviewing or actually having had a conversation with larine kerry and she's a writer, a mother, an educator, an organizer. she wears many hats and more than ten years ago she wore the lady sitting hat, that's the title of her book, it came out and congratulations on the publishing of a new book. [applaus [applause]. so in lady sitting, her grandmother moves in and everything changes. day-to-day life, family relationships, the man that she knew, even their shared past. as a child, she had a classic memoir black ice, spent the weekends with her grandmother

who spoiled her. and now it's her turn, 100 years old and in her home. kerry knew there might be reckonings to come. she was a force, managed a rental property and real estate business. and maintained her independence. her stubbornness completely got a license to talk about her husband and talk about that later. and carrying on a fut with the normalcy in bought twirps between mothers and mothers, mers and daughter. which she could be voted to her father, to black craand there we tensions with kerry drawing on her spirituality and when nana

doubts her dedication, she begins a mediation on love and i have to call her miss jackson. >> she's like that. she's like that. >> because she was such a grand dame in the old world kind of way. i'll talk about it later. just to get a sense of the voice ap the tone of the book, would you mind reading a little for the audience. >> sure. this takes place at the beginni beginning. this the one we talked about and takes place in the beginning of the book and it really is about what happened the night we took my grandmother to the hospital after she had been carefully, crourageously living by herself

and all the work that it take to make that happen. >> when the emt's came up the groaning stairs. they pulled the area with young male voices and bodies. their practice was to pick her up, put her on the gurnney, strap her up and carry her down. since we wanted agreement we asked them to slow down a bit. my sister suggest they use a chair rather than a gurney. >> rather than a stretcher so nana could sit more erect and feel less vulnerable. >> and we said since she was 70 years her senior they were were

not to call her by her name. and i told them-- this would kill her, she ramped at me. >> and it would be mine my head. so i repeated using renaissance language, on my head be it. but i thought if we left her to die alone laying in a tablespoon of her own urine. i'm trying to think is the place many families get to. you know? people -- what do you do when your loved one once independent at the expense of a standard of living that you can't stand to see breached. you know.

so that's part of sometimes what happens. >> one of the beautiful takeaways for me from the book, it allows you to sort of move through that process with youment if the readers and been through it, as i have, it allows the reader to think about some of those very difficult questions that we had to among while escorting our beloved mother on grandmother to her death or to his death in the case of a father or a husband and the book has knots of human in it, although it is a story about a life, lives. there are some places you will be surprised and you're going to actually laugh and some of us , there's so much craziness involved. if you don't have a sense of humor or a bottle of something strong nearby.

[laughter] >> for a favorite text that helped you get through it like you did. >> yes. >> i imagine it may be more unimaginable. but this line in the part that just read resonated for me, as many did. this would kill her, she asked of me, and it would be on my head and i just want you to talk a little about the feelings of guilt that can come up or that may even have remained after you did all that you could do and yet. >> i think guilt is part of the whole process because there's nothing you can do that is fine, that is fine. this is' the wonderful doctor who wrote the book "being mortal", says that one of the thanks that's more important,

as a doctor, how can you do well for patients when you can no longer cure them? so how do you still do well? and i think how do you do well for a loved one when you can no longer make the pain go away, or when they can no longer walk or do the things that they want to do, do the things that you want to do together. but you still have to figure out how to do the best you can. and often, you make mistakes, and they make mistakes and then you feel guilty and so, it's always this sort of negotiation. the other thing you said was, going through the book with me and my family, my hope is that it gives time for meditation, because you're so busy doing it, you often don't have time to reflect on it and it's one of the most important things you're doing and you don't have time. you know, it's like being in

labor, and you don't have time to think about it, you just sort of do and then later, what often sort of bubbles up to the surface, you know, like fat on a broth, what bubbles up first is guilt. so, and you don't know often what-- where to go with it now because now you can't fix it anymore. >> and fixing it is what we're primed to do? >> i think they want you closer. >> want me to sit closer, could you not hear me all that time? is this better for the folks in the back? am i good? okay. this is fill disclosure, i have invisalign trays now and i'm conscious about articulating so the fact that you can't hear me at least you can understand me

when you do hear me. so these feelings that have to be processed and unfortunately these awful ones rise up first, you know, and it is, as they say with good analogy, with delivering, having a baby, you're in the moment and there's a lot going on in the moment. further away from the moment, some wonderfulness sort of pre dominates, right? but there's no real wonderfulness coming at the conclusion. you have the funeral, you had the service, you had the distribution of the ashes, et cetera. and it's ten years now. >> can i interrupt you there? >> yeah. >> part of writing for me is to figure out where there is wonder and where there is joy. >> okay. >> part of it is like slowing it down because at every step, if somebody is alive, there is

the capacity for joy. >> that's true. >> and every step along the way there is the capacity for joy we're not at war, we're not in a hellish situation. here is someone, we loved here and we were mucking through, it was a total mash-up of fear and love. there is joy and we can find it and if we can't find joy, we can at least find humor sometimes. >> it's a mix sometimes. >> it's a mix you're absolutely right and joy looks different in different environments. >> it does. >> and wonder looks different. okay. so would you talk to the audience a little about your early years with miss jackson in west collingswood. >> the early-- could i read it rather than talk it? sometimes in these years writing and then--

why was it that weekends at nana jackson's felt like a world apart? maybe because dressed in old ball gowns, i traveled with the sun patch across the floor of the suburban new jersey neo colonial and soaked in more light and lux than my parents west philadelphia apartment could ever offer. delight and time, the wide-armed fragrant mimosa to climb in summer, the fireplace to stoke in winter and choices all the day long, whatever your little heart desires. yes, yes, yes, i knew i was being spoiled, that word that obsessed black grown-ups and even kids, what could be world to be spoiled, ruled by indulgence, incapable of withstanding hardships in the future. we were brought up by hand as

pip in great expectations and much prouder. you're spoiled could get you a corrective beatdown, besides everybody needed to respect authority, limits and older people loved your black behind enough to bring you from wrong to right. and i knew myself to be a failure in toughness category and i was in terror with the sound of my mother coming for me and my father with the seldom used belt. if a kid down the street got a beatdown, in our row houses we could hear every one, i'd for a month. i'd know that my whole nana deal was off the charts spoiling which is why with peers i kept it to myself. what happened in west collingswood stayed in west collingswood. nana's weekend abundance didn't

feel unconditional by any means, our contract was that i would occupy myself while she got things done. and then she'd spoil me. but the time alone actually felt more like sabbath, as if god visited me occasionally in those sun patches and let me curl up to his presence. so that's how it felt. [applaus [applause] >> and one of the things that i think is it seems like miss jackson was determined to instill in you was a sense of pride in your blackness, in the black community, and as well, your obligation in terms of what it meant to walk before, to stand in front of. there's a steen in which your pop-pop, your grandfather, miss jackson's second husband was your step-grandfather or grandfather, and would like to

push you in front when you went out to-- as my mother would call them, excursions and you were reticent and one time you didn't, but he stood in front because there were white children in the mix. and can you talk a little about what it meant to be getting that kind of conditioning about how we present in front of, and what it meant to that generation. >> it was complicated. it was complicated so on the one hand there is what you're talking about, which was nana always thought whatever, you know, we should come first. that, you know, she was-- she used to tell a story about herself and her sister and how some lady had come to visit. their mother died very early so my older aunt was like substitute mother had to do

everything and older sisters did. ... i took it from mary and martha, it was partly naughty saying i was the youngest, i did not do any work. so lady politics, respectability, her father, whom she mentioned in very vague terms. >> why was at? >> i don't know. i wrote a whole doggone book and i still don't know. affect ma[laughter]

i don't know my mother didn't talk much about the. she would speak in vague terms so we would drive by whitesboro, a small town was a black and whitesboro, i thought it was funny that it's a black town in. [speaking in native tongue] but nana told me that that town was founded by someone her father worked with. , it was founded by a man named george henry white. he was the last black congressman from north carolina as the jim crow law were stopping black people from voting. he was in congress, nana's father will higgins was his secretary. he helped him write. sometimes i would write

something in tuesday that's so nice you must've gotten that from my father. he was a secretary for the black congressperson. this man tried to put ten to sessions the first antilynching law in 1900. it was never taken up but he wrote it. >> this congress? >> yes is congressman. in 1902 he left and said i'm leaving, there is not another black congressperson from north carolina for 90 years. there is not another black person in congress from anywhere for nearly 30 years. i did not know the specifics. i didn't know while will hagan was working for this man there

was on a putin talk within a hundred miles of the period where multiracial counsel was voted in legally. this is in north carolina. it was voted in legally. and then bloomington for failing too, there was a mob that went in and burned down the black newspaper, burned down buildings, seized city hall and put them out. >> that was a lesser-known tosa kind of situation. except in this case there had been -- they had been voted the glee. did the federal government march and and bring in the marshals and say dear you, we have a democracy they voted for these

people. that did not happen of course. so all of this was happening at the time that will hagan was in his young 30s. ambitious, they thought they would walk into a new tomorrow. when he was two years old, the north carolina whole constitution was being rewritten to read slavery and throughout his young adulthood as they were working in the republican party and trying to make changes and be multiracial as all this was happening, they were also on the democrat side riding in the gym carlotta pulled back. so it came in and the grandfather clause came in and then in 1913 he followed george henry white and moved his family to let off you. that is how we got there. >> some reason and they can of charles chestnut is that the

church at a church tradition where he writes about the community in the right? >> is that where he does it? yes, people need audience no. >> ththank you. there's so much that is hidden. >> what shape of democracy that we talk about. i did not know that. all i know all these people from north carolina who lived in my city and they all came up, a great migration. >> right, right, right. in fact the book is very effectively, your family journey with the history that shaped the world that you lived in, your grandmother lived in, that was a revelation the seamless test of learning about the time and what

happened in the organization of programs that help black people and still do. actually lorene -- i don't know how much you want to talk about dart sanctuary, the different community organizations that you are promoting? >> i do want to say i got here with this book and it should be seamless in our lives. because when you're an older person in your life they bring with them -- they bring into your life the life they live. the question is how much do you know, how much do they take, how much do you learn? so i listen to the people whose parents and grand parents were escaped from nazi germany.

those people, the holocaust comes into their lives has to because the people who were interned in camp the old people ring that into the lives -- people are starting to tell me things -- somebody in california told me about a mother and coming from ireland and losing a child to some terrible disease along the way. all of this comes into life because at the end of the life one of the things we do is start doing inventory. we start remembering the old thanks. and how we respond to it. it's part of our care my great grandfather, it was barbados, all folktales, me reading him the bible with a barbadian

accent. >> that's an obvious but less understood or appreciated reality for all people who are on a migration stream that has genesis indicates. i am thinking about, you see your grandmother was big about the stories that she knew, my father is from mississippi and his family moved to the midwest and he did not start talking about how awful it was -- he made it sound as picking cotton was funny. and it wasn't. but at the end he needed to let us know how hurt he was, the moments that stopped him because he is black, and yet he had so

many capacities, it sounds like you are fortunate in gathering information to help full and some specific acts. >> i have a better answer to your question. which is, a lot of it had to do shame. i think my grandmother was ashamed of many of the things that happened throughout their lives including the fact that her father who inherited land from his father, i have something in the book from this wonderful woman who has a set -- a website about freak other people in north carolina, i found it that she had an interview in the senate with

nana, my mother's grand father about his land and they are trying to investigate why black people were leaving the cell. >> because it was so fun back there right. >> one of the things he asked, how to get your land, how much do you have and he said, you can see the attitude coming off the page, i earned it. and he said this to the senator who asked him, i earned it. >> as if there was another way. >> for real, but during the depression they lost the money. i think there is a lot of shame. we have a whole narrative that says an america if you only dream it, if you only believe it if you work hard if you struggle

and if you don't it is probably your own damn fault. what did you do wrong, how are you inferior, that is what we say. so i think on the one hand she wanted to clean the heritage, on the other hand she felt bad that what did she have, she had a little house in the suburbs and she had one son and we had not taken over the world. >> it may be because she did not live long enough to see the first black -- >> she did. >> go she did. >> everyday. >> oh yeah yeah right. >> how is our young man doing. and she with other fathers, she had voted republican all her life. and she said, however, going to vote for him, and an they said

nana we can make the change, we can fix this. and she did in fact vote for obama a few weeks before she died. >> that was a nice moment in memory to take with her right? and because the book ends with the death of your grandmother, let's pick a little bit. what was the moment like when you realized there was no alternative, the woman cannot lift in her home alone even with the support your building in, you needed to bring her to you. how was that? >> i don't know, it seemed natural, we do not have a plan

b, she did not have a plan b. we talked before -- i said to her husband before, if nana needs it, what do you think and he said in typical fashion like my husband, lucky we have a rectory. he's a priest, every house in the philadelphia house like boom boom boom, tiny little places. it was larger, had more bedrooms had a wide staircase, we had a chair real for her so she could go up or down, sunday school kids really love to play for the chair. so we were able to bring her in we had a community around her we had people who came in sunday for coffee hour and fussed over her and we had a wonderful time

actually. we would sometimes take the wiltshire when we heard that roland the organist was wonderful would be practicing and i said roland is there, he would play and we had earphones with a microphone that's how i talk to her so she could hear us without the shedding that gives unintended emphasis and disrespect for it so she had that your funds on, she had her low vision glasses in the low vision clinic and when we got to church she would take the earphones off to a close race because it was dark anyway and the oregon, rolling with cs anatomy, and he just let that thing thrust and she would say i

feel like myself again. >> 0, 0, 0. you cannot know how to do it. you cannot get an instruction on how to do it, it's just when you operate when heart tells you what to do in those moments. and i told read when i met her that i was excited to get the book i thought until i started reading it because my own mother died three years ago and i was with her, i told her i cannot go through the door with you but i'm going to walk up to the door and i did. and it was the hardest promise i ever kept and not everybody can do it, there's no right or wrong is just in the moment if you can and you do a book like this

helps you step back and see what you did it's that kind gift. it's not that death is a happy thing, it's a natural thing. but there is some beautiful, it brings out of you what you did not know was there. >> there's a hospice that we loved, i loved every hospice nurse and government. it's an amazing gift they do for people. and the skill and the care and the unsentimental compassion which is wonderful to receive it is great, this is a woman in iowa who talked to us about my father-in-law and one of the things she said was every death is different people don't

control their death but sometimes it seems like they have something in it and we don't understand it and we don't know why it happened, we don't understand. but it seems like that's what happens. and she said to us, do not be surprised if you stay in the go to the bathroom and the person dies. sometimes that happens. you told your person your gonna walk up to the door and some people do not want to be walked to the door and you will cough and they will go. because they want whatever is right. they don't choose it but there seems to be something of the sense of life that may be happening right up to the end i

actually asked for respite care, hospice respite care and it was the one thing i try not to do because indiana's narrative was at the end, every man for himself. that was her narrative. and i realized that i was trying to give her a last experience, no the people who love you love you. at the end, my century the invention was an african-american, we did a celebration of black writing, i wish i had gaithersburg people writing to help as a volunteer. this is so gorgeous, i love this. we did a festival in philadelphia, indoor, outdoor,

we had a fabulous author and a mass choir and nana was sleeping terms and night and i was a maniac in one night stuck to the rail of the hospital but, i fell asleep. i was asleep on the toilet next door to her because -- >> none of this is beautiful to talk about but that's what happens. she's going to hurt herself and i'm going to be sleep. i've been telling myself that this was better and i no longer

having her care. we don't have the resources. so i took russ was scared and i said in five days will finish the tenth anniversary, will figure out, given back, and the nurse said, you know a lot of people are actually happier when they come in. she is going to take you for this. and i said no she is not. that was a come to jesus moment for me myself. i did not walk her up to the door i put her in respite care for five days. >> that was the best decision for you to make, there's no right or wrong, i just feel the last few years, my father died last summer, a bunch of close people died and they all died very differently, but hospice

was involved in two of those situations in my mother's case in my own skis. in my family did put her in respite care for week and one hospice came in they were like angels coming because they're so knowledgeable about any question that you have, they even answer, they are there because of what is happening. their recommendations. i had a relationship with my mother, i felt like i cannot show her how much i loved her because we did not ever say, i love you. but i could show her. my father was dying last summer,

we were there all day use intensive care bo the last two weeks we set our final words to him and that 30 minutes later he died. the idea that they have a choice, that the final choice isn't it. >> i don't know the everybody does. i just know what this lady told me and it's been true. the people die differently and they live differently. and in the think about what is going to happen different, he tells me that you can be in a worship to worship in the same church and they're all sitting together in these roasting envisioning very different.

things that will happen after death. even though we share the same words, even though we've been to the same ritual. but we have this life together, one thing we can exercise control over, and i kept thinking, that's only way i think about it. >> we only have 15 minutes. i want a chance to ask you questions and you cannot answer this question if you don't want to that i'm about to ask you considering that you been through that you read about in the book and the different kind of family you built with your husband and daughters then your grandmother built with her son and her husband. how do you imagine considering

your last, how do you imagine you would like your final days or hours or weeks or months to work? >> here's the thing, i'm in a do a data time. i drove down here in a rented chevrolet, i hope to god and make it home. who knows, i'm a writer, we know the any day i can be on the number 17, it's kissing me off. >> take it one day at a time. that is what i'm going to try to

do. >> how would you like to do the questions, people come up to the mic? >> everything, i am learning from 70 people about their amazing creativity and variety in working with people they love. because there are all kinds of ways, my grandmother wanted us to dig a hole and put her ashes in in the cemetery where her family has bypassed the whole liner and stuff. [laughter] i have the story and i read it at a bookstore the lady i was staying with his mayor b&b, the lady had come she was dear, we went back to the house and she told me her mother had done this.

you can do it, no you cannot do it. her mother had begged her last dying wish, please, earn your husband without their and they could never find alone because people always there, mowing the lawns, morning, bringing flowers, loving she could ever find time alone, they're waiting there talking and think about the ones in sitting in waiting in there digging a hole, but all my god, who knew, i thought this was rude idea. >> nothing new so any questions from any of you? can we share any of your experiences? >> i just wanted to say i needed that today, i've been to give

her under care of my princess 2005 i father died a few years ago, i don't get much sleep. it drives me crazy and i want to give up but hearing you talk today, i could do it another day. [applause] the hardest thing is being alone with her. he people say, how are you today, i'm fine, even though you fell off the pot. because nobody is at five intent, they don't want to hear that and so it isolated. there's a whole cloud out there doing it. >> good afternoon, thank you so much for writing this book when i read the synopsis of it i'm going to buy it, maybe i'll give it to somebody who is

approaching the stage of life will then be taking care of someone, my mom passed years ago and we took care of them. in this just a part of life. in sitting here listening to you and the questions that you asked back and forth just confirms things of how were doing. in putting these words down because it will help a lot of people. [inaudible]

[inaudible question] [inaudible question] he was not coming back on, he looked at me and cried and said i don't have a home more, you don't love me anymore. and i knew that was not what he met but at that point time he had to give up what he was doing. he was been subbing teaching at 89 and all his son and working hard at physical therapy to come home and now you're told me i cannot. that guilt is something that carries with you. and before he died we got a chance to talk and he told me i understand and i know he did the bestie could. that made me feel a little bit better. but the guilt is hard. . . .

>> how do elderly people feel? >> nana talked about not wanting to be a burden, cob -- constant talk back and forth between us and what we ended up saying that's part of the loss.

you want -- i want to live my life, i want not to be a burden and what we ended up saying it's not our decision whether or not we can have the capacity never to have to ask for of other people, we -- [laughter] that was perfect metaphor of train moving through life and we have no control. [applause] >> i do think that people who love you or are paid to care for you, people who love you, i

think partly the person has to acknowledge it and say, i know this is hard for you, thank you. a lot of people -- i know this is hard. it's hard for you. this is a you know what show right now. when nana and i got to that point, this is hard, i hate this, you hate this, let's have a snack, want a snack and, those little tarts, fruit tarts and we would have a little snack and we would say, okay, we are still alive, there's something we can do together. >> i wanted to thank you for this. i purchased it because of the title. i thought it had such a dignity to it, you know, i have -- i'm a widow. my late husband's mother is

still living and we help take care of her, she's 90 and i thought that was so appropriate because she doesn't want help because she doesn't want people to say they're baby sitting her. >> that's right. >> i also have a 27-year-old with stage 4 colon cancer and she hates the idea of people making her feel like she's a burden. and i just love the dignity. >> thank you. thank you. [inaudible] >> it was so beautiful. it touched my heart. your passion, my question to you is, are there any plans to make this an audio book?

>> there is an audio book, it's available right now. yes. >> purchase it here? >> i think you purchase it online. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> yes? i did read -- they let me read the audio book, yes. [applause] >> and i'm glad i did because had i not, i would have had a very hard time come out because i think it's all done, i think everything is fine and i read the audio book and it's like, oh, my god, every time i go through it i have to acknowledge it. >> my mother made her transition last january. >> wow. >> she was 93 year's old and she was fiercely independent, did not want any of us to have the

worry, the word she would use, of taking care of her. fortunately she was in fairly good health and she fell and broke her leg and in about 3 months she's like, she passed away, but what she was really good at doing, we have a large family, was blaming on each other to get what she wants and she was able to do that and did not want to be in the hospital, she ended upcoming back home to stay my with my sister, so she basically planned everything out and passed away in her sleep. >> yeah, it's definitely what my grandmother used to always say. i had in here she had perfect death high coup coi should

memorize because i didn't have exactly right, her father, she always used to say, he washed his teeth and went to bed and the next morning he didn't wake up and that's -- i mean, that's the dream, right? >> that's the dream. >> you don't always get it. >> you don't always get it, yeah. >> thank you so much. >> i want to thank you for buying the book, it's a good for every phase in age and thank the book -- the gaithersburg. >> i hope they have me back. >> i hope so too. thank you. [applause] >> book signing -- the book signing --

[inaudible] >> buy copies of the book >> okay. >> all right. >> hello, everybody, can you hear me okay, am i loud enough? i'm supposed to speak directly into this, okay, great. so just housekeeping notes before we get started with the conversation with damon young, i just want to welcome, everybody, tenth annual gaithersburg book festival, rain or shine, it's great to see everybody having a good time. the city that proudly sports art of humanity and please to bring you the great event thanks in part