How little one knows, really, of one’s parents • Caitlin Mahar

How little one knows, really, of one’s parents • Caitlin Mahar

When Didier Eribon’s mother was eighty-seven, he and his estranged brothers placed her in a nursing home in Fismes, near Reims, northeast of Paris. Within a few weeks she had become bedridden and stopped talking, eating and drinking. Less than two months after her admission she was dead. According to the institution’s clinicians, such a rapid decline was not unusual. Some French geriatricians describe it as syndrome de glissement. Literally “sli…