Precious Lives is a gripping memoir from Margaret Forster as she traces the final years of the life of her ancient father and her middle-aged sister-in-law.
Forster had had a difficult relationship with her father throughout his life and so doing her ‘bit’ in looking after him in his final years was quite a challenge. She dutifully shared these duties with other members of her own family and despite being a reluctant ‘carer’ (from afar – she lived in London for half the year and in the Lake District for six months and he in Carlisle), she makes no attempt to claim credit for making some of his final years as comfortable as she and others could.
Eventually the stubborn old man moves into a home in his nineties and has nothing at all of a life as the end approaches. Here Forster is scrupulously honest in recognising that he would be better off dead rather than living a half life.
Margaret Forster’s sister-in-law died of cancer in her mid-fifties. The two were close and Marion’s painful death is heart wrenching to read about. Eventually when there is no hope Marion quietly accepts the inevitable and dies peacefully after enduring great pain.
