It is reprinted here with permission. As I grew older, my mother became a great embarrassment to me. When we occasionally ate out together, there would invariably be a conflict during the meal. My father would become impatient with my mother's turning down dish after dish offered to her by harried waitresses.
Anorexics have a distorted body image.
To them, their skeletal appearance seems normal, and people of normal weight seem fat. During the last 10 years of her life, my mother's weight averaged 68 pounds, yet she had no idea how bad she looked. I was 16 and swimming at a high school meet that she attended. She was 48 years old and looked 90. Her bleached blonde hair was brittle and dry.