Joshua H Roth

Life Lines: Art, Memory, Relationship

A Graphic Memoir

by Joshua H. Roth, with Richard L. Roth

Even those of us with strong relationships with our parents know them only partially. What were their lives like before we were born? What have they withheld from us about their working lives? What personal and cultural complexities shaped their sense of self and their relationships with us? Maybe they don’t want to burden us with their frustrations and dreams, or maybe we were so focused on our own we never bothered to ask them about theirs.

Dad is 95 and I’ve spent the last five years getting to know him better as he ages at home, and discovered some things about him that he had kept to himself for decades. These discoveries illuminated some of the social contexts of his life choices, and the structures that made and unmade his dreams and realities. This book is our account of his life and work, and our relationship.

The boomer generation will soon be entering their 80s, and more and more people will be living into advanced old age. This book suggests how we might arrange care in such a way that we avoid the pervasive problem of care fatigue, or the emotional and social distancing that might occur when care is outsourced completely. It also points the way towards how we can re-make the extended period of advanced old age into an opportunity for parents and adult children to cultivate emotionally enriching relationships.

I suppose we all want to be appreciated, and yet perhaps we prefer not to be completely transparent. Dad made himself visible, and yet in many ways opaque, hiding something in his images that suggested meaning but could not be completely deciphered. But language is a shared project. Dad’s art was an invitation for all to try to understand. This collaborative book project is the result of my accepting his invitation.