Anne Lamott captures some powerful truths in this book...I hope I never forget the section below...

"What are you supposed to do, when what is happening can't be? When it's all too scary and weirdly fascinating and grim, and the old rules no longer apply? I remember this feeling when my mother was in the last stages of Alzheimer's, when my brothers and I needed so much more to go on than we had -- explanations, plans, a tour guide, and hope that it really wasn't going to be all that bad. But then it was all that bad, and then some, and all we could do was talk, pray and stick together. We somehow managed to laugh a lot, the great miracle, and we sought wise counsel -- medical, financial, spiritual. A nurse from the Alzheimer's Association finally entered into the mess with us. We said, "We don't know what we're doing; we don't know if we should put her in a home; we don't even know what's true anymore," and the nurse said gently, "How could you know?"

And so we kept hobbling forward, and all we could do was the next right thing. I kept remembering an old Xeroxed photo of Koko the signing gorilla, with a caption beneath it that read, "The law of the American jungle: Remain calm, share your bananas." That's what we did -- cried, tried to make each other laugh and stay calm, shared our bananas. And when the time came to know what to do, we did. I took the cat out of her arms; we put her in a home. It was a nightmare. It killed something in us, and we came through."