Goodbye Vitamin hit me in a million different places. It’s funny and conversational, yet sad and weird and lonely.

I moved home after college, jobless. Then I stayed home because my mom’s health was declining. She was diagnosed with lupus. I found myself in a caregiving role years before I anticipated. My mom cannot drive anymore and has trouble with day-to-day tasks. While my college and high school peers were traveling, getting their dream jobs, getting married, and buying houses, I was in a weird limbo state.

While reading Goodbye Vitamin, Ruth’s struggles with being at home with her family were so familiar to me. Someone else gets it! It’s weird! But it’s also ok.

I also saw my grandmother in Howard. My grandmother has dementia. She is far away sometimes. Sometimes, she is in the 80’s. She is currently in a care facility because she fell and broke her hip. My family cannot visit her or hold her hand. Her English is mostly gone. She still wants to paint and make jokes.

Goodbye Vitamin was soothing for me to read. There are a lot of very hard things we have to do, but sometimes, we just have buy the chicken rotisserie because why not?

CW: memory loss, dementia, break up, New Year’s Eve, death of parents, adoption, food descriptions, alcoholism, infidelity, drugs, sexual harassment of a minor, mention of suicide