Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter's Last Goodbye

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter's Last Goodbye

by Ann Putnam, David Hilfiker (Introduction), Thomas Cole (Foreword)

3.92 of 5 stars 3.92 · rating details · 12 ratings · 8 reviews

This is the story of my mother and father and my dashing, bachelor uncle, my father’s identical twin, and how they lived together with their courage and their stumblings, as they made their way into old age and then into death. And it’s the story of the journey from one twin’s death to the other, of what happened along the way, of what it means to lose the other who is als...more

Hardcover, 255 pages

Published November 23rd 2009 by Southern Methodist University Press

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

(showing 1-20 of 20)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Jul 08, 2010 Nicole Langan rated it 5 of 5 stars

For anyone who has walked side-by-side in the culminating steps of the life of an elderly person, Ann Putnam's Full Moon at Noontide is a healing balm. She understands. She's been there three separate times. Her Uncle Henry. Her father. Her mother. Being with someone in their final years, days, hours is both a hardship and a privilege. She explains, "... pure love becomes when it is distilled through such suffering and loss - a blue flame that flickers and pulses in the deepest heart."

The shared...more For anyone who has walked side-by-side in the culminating steps of the life of an elderly person, Ann Putnam's Full Moon at Noontide is a healing balm. She understands. She's been there three separate times. Her Uncle Henry. Her father. Her mother. Being with someone in their final years, days, hours is both a hardship and a privilege. She explains, "... pure love becomes when it is distilled through such suffering and loss - a blue flame that flickers and pulses in the deepest heart."

The shared episodes are poignant. They involve handicapped seating, Maalox glasses, falls, and catheters - "the fragility of it all." The three senior citizens begin to function as one unit. While backing the car out of the driveway, her mother drives, her uncle looks left and her father looks right while shifting gears. Yet their teamwork is not enough against Mother Nature. During a winter blackout, they are without heat and electricity for five days. Safety in numbers is no longer a guarantee.

The house is sold and the trio is uprooted to University House, an upscale retirement community near where Putnam lives. It is considered a "dangerous business" to make friends when "death was a fall, a sneeze, a heartbeat away" so they "kept their attachments light." Putnam is honest about her role in their lives. When her uncle nearly loses her father's wheelchair into oncoming traffic while leaving church, Putnam feels guilty about not making the effort to take them herself. However, she knows that it will tie up her entire day serving as chauffeur and running errands. She presents a realistic picture by admitting to her own shortcomings.

Uncle Henry was also difficult - "the evil twin." When Putnam's daughter describes him as "another grandfather." He responds, "But then that would mean I'd have to have had sex with your grandmother." He had a high appreciation for shock value. Putnam goes on to say, "My uncle was so difficult those last years, and my parents gave up so much to have him there. It had seemed so anguished at the time, but in fact it has left no bitterness. For the last twenty years, my uncle came along everywhere they went, how they couldn't bear to leave him behind."

Putnam's memoir beautifully chronicles their final moments. While Uncle Henry is dying in the ICU, her father is being treated above him on the sixteenth floor. She is comforted by the words of the ICU priest, Father Bill when asked how he can stand working in a hospital: "Oh, but this is a luminous place. It shimmers, if only you can see it. There's a thin membrane separating the physical and the spiritual. We should walk with one foot in each place always. This place reminds me to do that. It's a thin place."

Putnam recounts witnessing Uncle Henry's final moments. "Now his breathing changes. Two little puffs of breath, then a long, breathless silence that stretches out between one world and another until he catches it up again and pulls himself back into this life. He's emptying the body of air. But there is no gasping, no death agony, just little puffs of air, little commas of breath, the sweet, soft sound of the spirit going someplace else. His eyes are open. The light has not gone out. All the times I had left him, and gone home to eat or sleep, to take up the threads of my life as best I could, and I thought please let go, please let this all be over, please just slip away softly into the night. Now I am grateful to be here and think how easily I might not have been."

Putnam is also there when her father enters the death fugue as explained by a nurse - "What you see when you look at him is not what he's experiencing. He's not really in his body like you think. He's someplace else now and doesn't want to be called back." Terror drives Putnam from the nursing home during the death vigil. She has a failure of nerve and panics. Upon her return, the hospice chaplain arrives. "Go away! I want to scream, but polite to the end, I hold my tongue. They think I need company for this final stretch. They don't know I've been here already. They don't know how strong I've grown. I didn't know it myself until now. This is sacred space, and I want it all to myself. I have no need for interpreters now. Father Bill is all I need, and he's hidden safely inside. 'We are not our bodies. We are not our minds. We are not our emotions, though they are all part of us. Our truest self is a spirit place that has always been there. He's going toward it now. Everything else is falling away.'"

She is also witnesses her mother's death. "After my father died she took to studying the obituaries in the paper. 'When I read that someone died after a short illness, I think how lucky that person is. I'd be grateful for those words after my name.' I know she's thinking of how long my father took to die. Just after midnight, my practical, no-nonsense mother dies. I watch her spirit leave her body within moments, watch her face change into a death mask before me and become someone else. It's all right. She'd wanted to be out of her body for so long - no ambivalence here, not a moment wasted going where she wants to go. Come on up, the twins say. It's great up here. My father reaches down to give her a lift."

Overall, this is a must-read for anyone who has witnessed firsthand the passing of a loved one.
(less)

like · see review

Jun 18, 2010 Bookventures Book Club rated it 5 of 5 stars

Full Moon at Noontide is a memoir of Putnam’s cherished moments with her family. Putnam is an English professor whose writing resonates with you. Aside from the fact that the material is touching, her writing just helps to push you over the edge until you do either one of two things: you laugh out loud or you just start crying.

The theme of this story was the issue of getting older and the little things that people do when they get to that stage in their lives. I found that the story was an attra...more

like · see review

Jul 26, 2010 Christine Plaisted rated it 4 of 5 stars

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully Sad, July 26, 2010
A Kid's Review
This review is from: Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter's Last Goodbye (MEDICAL HUMANITIES SERIES) (Hardcover)
Full Moon at Noontide is a beautiful book about a woman who loses her parents and uncle, and the trials they go through along the way. This wonderful look at the end of life, is a beautiful tribute to her parents and a stark reminder to all of us who live in the "Sandwich Generation" of what is important, our family and the l...more

like · see review

Nov 21, 2010 Judithproller rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a good book to read about death and dying . However, I thought it was more depressing than spiritual and accepting. Her losses were profound. Her perspective brought the process of the aging body front and center. I could relate to so much of it in reference to my parents and to working as a hospice volunteer. However, it didn't really provide mne with peace and acceptance. It is more about acknowledging what happens to the body as we slowly die. Shas writes beautiful prose. I thought it...more

like · see review

Jul 15, 2012 Athira (Reading on a Rainy Day) rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: source-own, source-review, 2010, nf-bios-memoir, nonfiction, personal-library

Ann Putnam had just reached home after a day at work, when her daughter tells her that "Grandpa had a stroke", with "no preamble and no way to soften it".

Doesn't it always begin that way? A telephone call across the miles, one reality exchanged for another in an instant. Not that you weren't waiting for it all along in some dark place of your mind where you hold such things that cannot yet be brought into the light. You wish for a bad connection, crossed lines, a lapse in hearing, a rush into dr

...more Ann Putnam had just reached home after a day at work, when her daughter tells her that "Grandpa had a stroke", with "no preamble and no way to soften it".

Doesn't it always begin that way? A telephone call across the miles, one reality exchanged for another in an instant. Not that you weren't waiting for it all along in some dark place of your mind where you hold such things that cannot yet be brought into the light. You wish for a bad connection, crossed lines, a lapse in hearing, a rush into dream. But you're only hearing what you fear, though none of it seems real.

Ann's father and mother stayed just four hours away along with her uncle, who was her father's identical twin - all in their eighties. Her father's stroke was only the beginning of a long journey towards death and loss, accompanied by an endless frenzy of diseases, sadness, closure, regular visits to the doctor, a move to a retirement home first, then a nursing home. Ann will lose all three within a span of five years, and then just three months from the publication of her book, she loses her husband to cancer.

I cannot even begin to fathom the kind of tragedy that had befallen Ann Putnam. But why do I look at it like a third person when this could happen to anyone - in fact does happen to a lot of people lucky or unlucky to live all the way to the ripe 80s or 90s? In fact, our perspective to an old person on the verges of death is sometimes, if not all times, callous and lacks feeling. We have been through the infant-years, childhood, adolescence, teenage years, middle age, and so on, depending on where we stand on the age chart. But old age is something we haven't yet encountered, unless we have seen it in our own parents or grandparents. Full Moon at Noontide occasionally shows some of this lack of concern from a bystander, and then it slaps you in the face when you remember all the times you didn't smile at the old lady across the street, or that day when you just looked away from that sick man in the restaurant, still in his hospital clothing.

Full Moon at Noontide was a gut-wrenching reading experience. And I mean every word of that. There is a lot of sadness in this book, and I cried at almost every page. It reminded me of the grandparents I lost, and the other old folks I never got to know. As a friend of mine says, "life happens and so does death". But as in Ann's case, where do you even get the strength to watch three dearest people snatched from you suddenly within a few years? Add your spouse and your adorable dog to that equation, and I might even give up on life totally. And that is where this beautiful memoir scores. It doesn't leave you feeling depressed and upset at the rules of life and death. Instead, it teaches you several lessons in a subtle manner. It opens you up to the very realities of the lives of the people when they are old and near-death - that regular visit to the hospital, each time returning back leaving behind a part of you; that frequent lapse of memory and/or consciousness; that simple smile on their face when they see their child or grandchild; and that week-long waiting for the weekly ritual of a night out at a restaurant.

Death scares me a lot. It is the one big fear I have been having for years. And when I was about to start reading this, I was expecting to put it down every few pages. But as Thomas R. Cole, who wrote the introduction for this book said, I was also seduced by this book from the beginning. Ann weaves the characters of the twins - Homer (her father) and Henry, and her mother, Grace, so vividly, that by the time I turned the last page, I felt I lost someone so dear to me. These three amazing characters had very successful lives, and to see them struggle through their last years in life was very hard for me, and yet this is what happens in reality. But their life is not all tragedy, as there is plenty of humor in the book to get through the days of watching them slip away. I had never before looked at life from their perspective - it was always as a third person. But Full Moon at Noontide changed that. It made me want to reach out to Ann, hug her and tell her it's alright. Her experiences were tragic, but she faced them with a courage that I surely do not have.

I haven't stayed long enough or come often enough no matter how long I stay or how often I come.

And how often we regret that we don't spend enough time with them. I still have some, though I know it is too late to worry about it. In so many ways, I am really glad I read this book. I know many will refrain from reading a book such as this, simply because of all the sadness it may induce. But far from being a depressing read, this book is a knowledge mine - about families, identical twins, and relations; about love and sacrifice; about closure and courage; and about a daughter's last goodbye.

I received this book for free from the publisher via Pump Up Your Book.(less)

like · see review

Jun 07, 2010 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir, non-fiction

From my blog...[return][return]Ann Putnam has written a straightforward, honest and loving look at the process of aging, dying and death. A potentially frightening and morbid topic for many and yet Putnam writes her memoir, Full Moon at Noontide, about her parents, Grace and Homer, and her Uncle Henry, her father's twin, in the most loving and tender of manners. This is indeed a book about the struggles one faces at the end of life, yet it is so much more, it is a book about love, dignity, and h...more

like · see review

Apr 17, 2010 Kappy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

A sobering but not hopeless look at aging. Also as a nurse I see the continuing need for coordination of care at the end of our lives.

like · see review

Jan 17, 2011 Melissa rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was going to get a two until I read tearfully through the last quarter. I guess it took that long to connect. The story to tell was wonderful, but the author - though writing about her mother, father, and uncle - seemed disconnected. Considering the subtitle, I was expecting more of Putnam's thoughts and feelings throughout that period of caregiving, instead of a fairly objective re-telling of the trio's lives and last years together. But we all process grief and reflect in different w...more

like · see review

Jan 25, 2013 Peter Brunjes marked it as to-read

Dec 01, 2012 Justin Brunjes marked it as to-read

Aug 29, 2012 Valerie marked it as to-read

Aug 29, 2012 Janice rated it 5 of 5 stars

Mar 26, 2012 Valerie added it

Shelves: memoirs

Mar 18, 2012 Allison rated it 2 of 5 stars

Apr 30, 2011 Megan marked it as to-read

Apr 06, 2011 Kalpana Palaniswamy marked it as to-read

Aug 11, 2010 Molly marked it as to-read

Jul 05, 2010 Cindy a/k/a LuLu Brown marked it as to-read

Shelves: please-buy, p-authors

Jun 07, 2010 Linda rated it 4 of 5 stars

May 08, 2010 Kathy Guilbert rated it 4 of 5 stars

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

Genres

Non Fiction

3 users

Autobiography > Memoir

2 users

See top shelves...

Books by Ann Putnam

Hemingway and Women: Female Critics and the Female Voice

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Full Moon at Noon...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

title link	preview: Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter's Last Goodbye
avg rating	preview: Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter's Last Goodbye Goodreads rating: 3.92 (12 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6681328-full-moon-at-noontide?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1344746309l/6681328.jpg[/img][/url] [url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6681328-full-moon-at-noontide?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter's Last Goodbye by Ann Putnam[/url]

Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter's Last Goodbye

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

Genres

Books by Ann Putnam

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About Full Moon at Noon...

new topic
Discuss This Book