Making the Best of What’s Left by Judith Viorst
Both deeply personal and universal.
The complete title of prolific author Judith Viorst’s latest captivating book is Making the Best of What’s Left: When You’re Too Old to Get the Chairs Reupholstered. It’s a frank, humorous blend of memoir and astute advice for aging gracefully that is touching and inspiring.
The book provides personal observations on what Viorst calls the “Final Fifth”: people who are 80 to 100 years of age. She is 94, charming, keenly intelligent, quick-witted and remains a disciplined author who sits at her desk and writes on a daily basis as she has done since she composed her first poem at age 7.
Her works encompass several genres, including poetry, fiction, non-fiction and playwriting, thoroughly examining and exploring universal themes of love and loss, and the delicate balance between joy and sorrow.
Good Books and a Happy Marriage
Viorst’s biggest success to date is one of her children’s books, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, published in 1972 to great acclaim. It became a blockbuster bestseller with over four million copies sold and translations into several languages, which spawned three sequels. Decades later, it was transformed into a Disney film and subsequently produced as a staged musical adaptation.
These four books feature her three sons, Anthony, Nicholas and Alexander. They continue to be fodder for her fertile mind, joined by their wives and a total of seven adored grandchildren.
Sadly, husband Milton Viorst, award-winning journalist renowned as a specialist in Middle East policies, died of COVID-19 in December 2022, a few weeks before their 63rd wedding anniversary. They met as undergraduate students at Rutgers University when Judith was 18 and Milton 19. This book is dedicated to him: For Milton, one last time.
Honored American poet, critic, scholar and long-time Bard College Professor Joan Retallack provided a succinct preface: In the meantime… enjoy not being dead.
When Life Takes a Sudden Turn
Judith Viorst discusses Making the Best of What’s Left, beginning with her admonition to Milton that he wasn’t supposed to die before her, asking, “But when did he listen?” The book is compact, the chapters short with a lovely mix of prose and poetry. Her love for her husband is markedly evident and indelible.
The third page contains a brief poem titled “A Valentine for the Extremely Married.” Considering that statistically women live longer, she writes about widowhood and the challenges that the “Final Fifth” face with increasing limitations. The Afterlife is something the author states is not something she believes in, but has multiple conversations with contemporaries, old friends and fellow residents in her retirement community representing other views.
It was wrenching when it became clear after a fall that injured both of them that Milton’s unsteadiness and frailties made it impractical for them to continue to live in the beautiful seven-bedroom, with five fireplaces and many stairs, Victorian home that they had owned and loved for 51 years. Radically downsizing to a two-bedroom apartment in a senior citizens’ retirement community was monumentally daunting and painful.
Confronting the disposition of a mountain of possessions, including a personal library of 15,000 books, all wrapped up in more than half a lifetime of memories of raising children, working and celebrating with countless dinners and parties, was a massive and bittersweet undertaking. Viorst’s three sons and their wives, and their grandchildren, did not want nor have the space in their own homes that would make it possible for them to keep everything their parents had accumulated.
Consequently, reupholstering the chairs became moot.
The Realities of Aging
The Rock Creek Park area retirement community had charm and several old friends in residence, and was close enough to the old house to be in the neighborhood, but did not feel like home immediately. “One Sensible Safe Retirement Community” is a poem extolling its advantages and virtues, concluding with a little problem: “Everyone’s old.”
Judith Viorst expounds on the “nonnegotiable reality” of aging; even when the mind remains sharp, one’s aging body bears telltale signs of the years, and choices become more constricted.
If fortunate, one does become elderly without dementia and yet often is dismissed as being unimportant or irrelevant; with the passage of youth and middle age, one’s opinion is no longer sought. Women, in particular, become virtually invisible. Viorst comments on the phenomenon of adult children now considering the parents who raised them as being in need of supervision and guidance.
Her strongly worded message, conveyed in boldface and in capital letters, is: “We’re Still Here” with these words ending a poignant poem: Trying to make the best of what’s left of the rest of it.
Embracing Life at Every Age
We generally don’t know our expiration date, thus connecting with others, participating, laughing and loving until the end is a positive way of continuing to embrace life. Judith Viorst reminds us that another way of promoting happiness at any age is to bring more laughter into our lives.
She provides numerous examples of contemporaries who are still working, volunteering, traveling, writing, creating art and music, making inter-generational friends and, if the opportunity presents itself, accepting new romantic relationships, all while being authentically themselves. The advice to stay physically and mentally active is sound for people of all ages.
Making the Best of What’s Left might be the last book the ever sparklingly brilliant Judith Viorst writes. It is both deeply personal and universal. We devoted readers can only hope those mornings at her writing desk will yield more wit and wisdom. This marvelous gem is one to buy, read, keep and gift to everyone you care about.
About Judith Viorst:
Judith Viorst is the author of the beloved Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, which has sold some four million copies; the Lulu books, including Lulu and the Brontosaurus; the New York Times bestseller Necessary Losses; four musicals; and poetry for children and adults. Her most recent books of poetry include What Are You Glad About? What Are You Mad About? and Nearing Ninety. She lives in Washington, DC.
Publish Date: 4/1/2025
Genre: Better Self, Memoir, Nonfiction, Self Help
Author: Judith Viorst
Page Count: 192 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 9781668068014
