When Breeda Miller’s one-woman play, “Mrs. Kelly’s Journey Home,” first came to Chicago, I was in the audience – laughing and crying and feeling my heart swell with the gorgeous, raw humanity of it all. And when Miller later set pen to paper to write an even more expansive collection of her Irish-American family’s stories – when she generously decided to build upon her 90-minute play with a book that is twice as entertaining and heartwarming – I was eager to be regaled and inspired once again. This book is a marvel; so is its author.
I see a lot of my own life in the stories that Miller tells us about her parents and her siblings: Our Irish ancestry, our humble beginnings, our love of language, our sassy humor and wit, and our tender and exhausting journeys through caretaking for a parent with Alzheimer’s disease. “Mrs. Kelly’s Journey Home” takes us from Dublin to Michigan, via Canada, and teaches us about the grit and determination required of immigrants in pursuit of “the American Dream.” This book is deliciously funny and achingly distressing. It is poignant at every turn, historical in ways that left me surprised and grateful, and instructive for those of us in need of inspiration and practical insights for the journey of caregiving a loved one with dementia.
Throughout the book, I can hear Tom and Mary Kelly’s voices – the “Holy Christ Tonight!” from Breeda’s dad and the “She’s no oil painting!” from her mom. I found myself mimicking the Irish accent so that “three and a third” became “tree and a turd” and smiling all the while. And I couldn’t help but wish – the entire time I was reading this book – that all authors would first craft their stories for the stage so that their books would be so full of visual and auditory detail and delight. Indeed, while many books leave me thinking, “It’s hard to picture that,” this book leaves no such gaps. In fact, the book contains actual pictures – family-album style – so we as readers feel as welcomed into Miller’s inner circle as we would if we were in her living room, admiring framed photos on the fireplace mantel.
There is something transformative about taking the time (and having the emotional maturity) to see our parents as more than just “Mom” and “Dad” – to acknowledge the difficulties of their own upbringings, the challenges of their mid-20th century marriages, and the triumphs and traumas of their colorful, imperfect, “doing-the-best-they-can” lives … for better or for worse. “Mrs. Kelly’s Journey Home” is a memoir unlike any other I have ever read; it helps redefine ubiquitous concepts like “home” and “family,” and it makes palpable the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship, especially during end-of-life odysseys. No matter where you are from, who your people are, what you have endured and achieved, or what values you hold dear, this book is bound to resonate with you on multiple levels – playful, practical, and profound. I highly and enthusiastically recommend this book.
