It's a fairly common scenario in these days of long-lived parents, caring adult children, and a disease that affects nearly half of us by age 85.

In The Last of His Mind, John Thorndike, eldest of three sons and in his early 60s, arranges to live with his 91-year-old father in what turns out to be the father's last year of life.

Two things make this memoir uncommon. One is the fact that the author's father, Joe Thorndike, was managing editor of Life Magazine in its heyday, and the author spends a fair amount of time recalling anecdotes of his father's rubbing elbows with Winston Churchill, Henry and Clare Boothe Luce, John Kenneth Galbraith, and other historic figures.

The other is more elusive, but is what ultimately makes this more than a story of an intellectual giant's decline, and more than a devastating chronicle of the last stages of a tragic disease. It's the author's search for an understanding of who his father and mother were—to each other and to him.
It's the story of attempts to bridge the distance between a father who was always emotionally reserved, as were most men of his generation, and a son who plunged into the openly emotional waters of the 1960s and found a home there. In his search for answers, the author finds new insights about why his mother left the marriage and what happened to both parents in the aftermath.

What makes this book more than a sentimental goodbye is not the author's discovery of the relationship he always longed for, but his new appreciation for the man his father truly was and for how much his father shaped his life.

As he struggles for answers from a man who most days cannot put a sentence together, Thorndike poses the age-old question:

Why, I ask myself now, didn't I come and spend a month with my father when he could still hold a conversation? Even a year ago I could have learned plenty. ... Instead I trundled along, too busy with my own life. ... We're all warned about this: Better ask the questions while you have the chance—and I didn't.

But Thorndike doesn't dwell on regrets. He takes advantage of this time with his father to make him as physically and emotionally comfortable as he can, while allowing him to keep making many of his own choices.

Anyone who has been a sensitive adult caregiver will identify with such dilemmas as whether to urge an outdoor walk or let his father continue to stare out the window; whether to delve into possibly painful memories in an effort to engage the mind; whether to encourage one more bite of broccoli before indulging a preference for almond fudge ice cream.

Thorndike's journey with his father is a journey with grief, loss, and death, but also a journey with love, joy, and acceptance of the mystery of life that somehow survives beyond physical death.