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An "affectionate, touchingly empathetic" (Janet Maslin, The New York Times) look at old age in America today Welcome to Canterbury Tower , an apartment building in Florida, where the residents are busy with friendships, love, sex, money, and gossip-and the average age is eightysix. Journalist Dudley Clendinen's mother moved to Canterbury in 1994, planning-like most the inhabitants-to spend her final years there. But life was not over yet for the feisty southern matron. There, she and her eccentric new friends lived out a soap opera of dignity, nerve, and humor otherwise known as the New Old Age. A Place Called Canterbury is both a journalist's account of the last years of the Greatest Generation and a son's rueful memoir of his mother. Entertaining and unsparing, it is essential reading for anyone with aging parents, and those wondering what their own old age might look like.
Introduction: Canterbury and the New Old Age ix
1 Good-bye, Mother, Hello 1
2 The Importance of the Moment 24
3 A Place Unto Itself 40
4 A Reason to Be Alive 61
5 The Cocktail Hour 78
6 Last Communion 89
7 The Dining Room Waltz 100
8 In Case of Fire 114
9 Going Home 124
10 The Plumbing Problem 137
11 Meanwhile, Back in the Tower 152
12 Looking for a Man 168
13 Sex and Satisfaction 184
14 "Laugh, Even If Your Heart Is Breaking" 194
15 Sleeping with the Sweetso 219
16 When They Were Children 229
17 When They Were in Love 244
18 Body Parts 258
19 War and Survival 279
20 I Can't Find My Wife 293
21 The Best-Laid Plans 303
22 Miss Osama 326
23 He Wants Our Ashes 336
Epilogue: Hello, Mother, Good-bye 345
Acknowledgments 367
Overview
An "affectionate, touchingly empathetic" (Janet Maslin, The New York Times) look at old age in America today Welcome to Canterbury Tower , an apartment building in Florida, where the residents are busy with friendships, love, sex, money, and gossip-and the average age is eightysix. Journalist Dudley Clendinen's mother moved to Canterbury in 1994, planning-like most the inhabitants-to spend her final years there. But life was not over yet for the feisty southern matron. There, she and her eccentric new friends ...