LOSING MUM AND PUP: A Memoir
Christopher Buckley
Twelve
Memoir
ISBN: 9780446540940
Losing both parents in less than a year can’t be easy. It’s even more difficult when they’re well-known people and you’re the only child. This puts your life, as well as theirs, in the spotlight even more. Christopher Buckley, the son of William F. Buckley, Jr. and Patricia Taylor Buckley, shares his thoughts and memories with us as he coped through the last year of their lives.
Buckley’s mother, “Mum,” died first, on April 14, 2007 at the age of 80, as the result of a septic infection in her thigh. Patricia was born into a well-known family in British Columbia, Canada, and moved to the United States when she married William. Although she was very beautiful (according to her son), a wonderful cook and an extraordinary hostess, and could have made a name for herself in her own right, she chose to let her husband be in the limelight (although she had ways of “stealing” it from him on occasion).
Buckley’s father, “Pup,” otherwise known as William F. Buckley, Jr., was the author of more than 50 books, the host of the TV show “Firing Line,” and the founder of the publication National Review, to name just a few of his notable achievements. When Patricia died, his health was already precarious due to emphysema, diabetes and sleep apnea. Buckley spent the next several months --- until his father’s death on February 27, 2008 --- trying to deal with the loss of his mother while helping to care for his ailing father.
LOSING MUM AND PUP is partly a memoir about Buckley’s parents and partly an autobiography of his life. He shares tidbits and stories about their lives and his life with them that are at times humorous, poignant or thought-provoking, or a combination of all three.
It is also a story about an only child caring for aging and ailing parents. This is a real-life situation in many households, one that countless adults can relate to. Buckley had to make some tough decisions regarding the care of his parents in their last days. He shares the difficulty of these times with honesty, a bit of satire (for which he is well known) and a refreshing sense of humor.
Buckley, author of such titles as NO WAY TO TREAT A FIRST LADY and THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, hadn’t intended on adding to his bibliography by writing about his parents, as he explains in the book’s opening paragraph. But he also says, “But I’m a writer, for better or worse and when the universe hands you material like this, not writing about it seems either a waste or a conscious act of evasion.”
I have read a couple of not-so-flattering reviews of LOSING MUM AND PUP. In fact, they were rather vicious. The writers of said reviews thought Buckley was disrespecting the memories of his parents by the way he wrote this memoir. I beg to differ. If his parents were as fun-loving and full of life as he says they were (and he should know because he was the one who lived with them), I think they both would have enjoyed reading this book about themselves. It’s a delightful memoir, full of insights into not only the lives of these two extraordinary and famous people, but also the life of the author, their only son.
--- Reviewed by Christine M. Irvin
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