WRAL-TV Reporter Amanda Lamb had to say a premature good-bye to her mother two summers ago. Her mother spent the last months of her life, dying of a brain tumor, living with her daughter. Lamb coped through something she does best, writing. In “The Living Room: The Transforming Power of Caregiving,” she shares the experience of how “a daughter learns how to live from her dying mother.”
Lamb calls the book her “heart project.”
“It chronicles the 80 days I cared for my mother when she was dying of brain cancer,” said Lamb. “I self-published this because it was so important to me to begin a dialogue between adult children and their parents about end-of-life issues.”
Lamb’s mother, an accomplished attorney, was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor on April 20, 2012. She came to live with her daughter in what Lamb calls, “the most unlived room in my house – the living room.”
“In that time, more living went on in that room than had ever before taken place there,” said Lamb. “Family and friends from all walks of life pulled up chairs around her bed. We ate. We drank. We sang. We cried. But mostly, we learned how to live again.”
Her mother died in that very room on July 8, 2012. And then came “The Living Room.”
“It’s painful, but also full of joyful moments that I spent with my mother listening and learning about life,” she explained.
Lamb will talk about “The Living Room” and sign books at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh on Wednesday, June 25, 2014, at 7:30pm. Crabtree will introduce his colleague and friend.
“Amanda Lamb is a miner. Her excavations in ‘The Living Room’ will make you laugh and cry,” said WRAL-TV Anchor David Crabtree. “You may even find yourself angry with God. Her insight might also change your life.”
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