One of my friends told me about The Leisure Seeker by Michael Zadoorian and I went online right away to put in an interlibrary loan request for it. It arrived quickly!
The Leisure Seeker is the story of an octogenarian couple who flee from doctors and concerned (adult) children to go on one last vacation in their RV, ‘The Leisure Seeker’.
I finished the book quickly, sitting outside in my sky-chair underneath beautiful blue skies on a glorious 75 degree Saturday in southern Wisconsin.
Ella, the main character has cancer and her husband John has Alzheimer’s. She plans their get-away as they trace Rt. 66 from Detroit to Disneyland to try to recall some of their best-loved memories and actually live a little rather than wither away till death.
I think she has it right. I sure hope I will have the guts to figure out a way to do something other than wait for our kids and doctors to helicopter over us in our final years.
The pharmaceutical companies and medical profession have figured out how to prolong life, but not how to make it dignified or worthwhile. We see it with our parents who are in their nineties. Old age can be awful! You’d better be stubbornly committed to breathing at all costs if you want to live beyond the normal working capacity of your vital limbs and organs. The boredom and inability to do anything about it would be the worst part, I think.