In this lyrical adieu to her mother, renowned Catholic essayist, poet, and professor Angela O’Donnell explores how the mundane tasks of caregiving during her mother’s final days—bathing, feeding, taking her for a walk in her wheelchair—became rituals or ordinary sacraments that revealed traces of the divine.
With Joan Didion’s grasp of grief, the spiritual playfulness of Mary Karr, and the poetic agility of Kathleen Norris, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell narrates the events that followed her mother’s fall and the broken hip that led to surgery. As O’Donnell and her sisters cared for their mother’s failing body during the last days of her life, they unconsciously observed rituals that began to take on a deeper importance.
Bathing her each morning was a kind of baptism, the nightly feeding of pie took on a Eucharistic significance, trimming and polishing nails became a kind of anointing. Beyond the seven there are the myriad sacraments they made up: the sacrament of community via cell phone, the sacrament of wheelchair pilgrimage around the nursing home, and the sacrament of humor and laughter. Mortal Blessings: A Sacramental Farewell is a deeply human portrait of loss balanced by the surprising grace found in letting go; it will resonate with any spiritual reader but especially caregivers and those currently in grief.
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O’Donnell is well known for her regular contributions to America and Christian Century, and as an occasional contributor to Commonweal. Her poems have been published in twenty different magazines and journals.
A perfect gift for caregivers and those grieving.
O’Donnell gives poetry readings and lectures and teaches poetry writing workshops throughout the United States.
"Beautiful and beautifully written!"
"In this beautiful and beautifully written book Angela Alaimo O'Donnell shows us that there are many more than just seven sacraments. By meditating deeply on what might seem ordinary moments, she shows us how life can be extraordinary indeed. This is a lovely book."
James Martin, S.J. Author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage
"Thoughtful memoir."
“In Mortal Blessings Angela O’Donnell brilliantly reads our final acts of caretaking, not as repetitive and meaningless, but as significant, holy ritual. Cutting a loved one’s hair, bringing her pie, engaging in conversation, even though it’s repetitive—all gain evocative meaning. In a culture obsessed by youth, a culture which hides illness and death, we need O’Donnell’s thoughtful memoir about how her mother’s last days became sacramental.”
Jeanne Murray Walker Author of The Geography of Memory
