“I’m having a hard time manufacturing words right now.”

Written By Amanda Barusch
Cover of “Care Home Stories” showing an unhappy woman holding a trio of inflated balloons while standing in an empty hospital hallway.

These were the first words Dad spoke to me when he found himself heavily sedated and physically restrained in intensive care.

So begins my chapter, “A Place for Dad,” which appears in the new book Care Home Stories, edited by Sally Chivers and Ulla Kriebernegg. It’s a hybrid piece in the tradition of Bakhtin that features the voices of my Dad and his primary caregiver and ends with a poem. Sally and Ulla set out to illuminate the paradoxes and continuities of residential care in their book. I think the cover photo speaks volumes.

Amanda Barusch

Amanda Barusch has worked as a janitor, exotic dancer, editor, and college professor. She lives in the American West, where she spends as much time as possible on dirt paths. She has an abiding disdain for boundaries and adores ambiguity. Amanda has published eight books of non-fiction, a few poems, and a growing number of short stories. Aging Angry is her first work of creative non-fiction. She uses magical realism to explore deep truths of the human experience in this rapidly changing world.

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