In his new book, Losing Mum and Pup, Christopher Buckley reveals in a moving way the human side of his famous father and mother, underscoring that even those known for their grace, charm and immense talents face the same challenges and limitations as the rest of us. It is also a moving tribute to his legendary father, who battled serious illness in his final year.

Editor's note: George Shadroui recently completed a book, Crossing Swords: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Left. He would gladly welcome a serious publisher.

It is probably fair to say that a great many fans and friends of Bill Buckley, among whom I count myself, awaited his son's memoir about his parents with some trepidation.

Yes, we knew that Christopher Buckley loved his parents and vice versa. But there is still evident in Christopher's personality the resentful, rebellious youth who insisted on smoking, despite prohibitions, used drugs recreationally, gave up on his faith, and recently voted for Obama…you get the idea.

The humorist is often lured to effect more than reason, and the urge to shock runs in the younger Buckley's veins – how else, after all, to get a little sunlight when living under the huge shadow cast by two legendary parents.

He is also a splendid writer. His memoir, Losing Mum and Pup, is an honest, bittersweet testimonial of love and loss that is as entertaining as it is mournful. That is to be expected, for the younger Buckley is one of America 's most celebrated humorists; who would expect anything less?

The storyline is straight forward as Buckley takes us through the final year with his ailing, aged but nevertheless formidable parents. His father was one of the icons of American political letters and the founder of modern conservatism and his mother by all accounts was a social maven of sharp wit and huge personality who filled every room with fear and awe. When Ted Kennedy years ago asked if he could borrow a car to drive back to Gstaad from the Buckley's Swiss chateau, Mrs. Buckley famously answered no, quipping that there were two bridges along the way. (This is, of course, a reference to the tragedy at Chappaquiddick – yikes.)

What a surreal life, one supposes, to have grown up in the Buckley household, when the day's guest was more likely to be Henry Kissinger, Norman Mailer, David Niven or Malcolm Muggeridge than the neighbor next door. Yes, clichéd as it sounds, they were larger than life. One also learns, reading this moving tribute, that they were human: egocentric, demanding, entertaining, generous, petulant, impatient, graceful, all part of the mix.

Just as certainly this is a book about death, no surprise, and how it reduces all of us, sooner or later, to biological field fodder. (Let us put aside the religious and spiritual issue for now). It is painful to read the accounts of his parents' terminal descents because the experience is universal and familiar to those of us who have lost a parent or friend to disease or age or both. CB captures this powerfully: "no matter how much you prepare for the moment, when it comes, it comes at you hot, hard and unrehearsed."

But the book is not maudlin because Mr. Buckley, even in the face of devastating loss, retains his humor. And there is plenty to chuckle about and a few things that make you wince, too.

Buckley recounts his mother's penchant to tell tall tales. Now, it seems every family has at least one member who is a story teller. You know the litany — the fish that got away, the heroic rescue of a neighborhood cat embellished to the point that the Normandy invasion seems a cakewalk in comparison, etc….)

But Patricia Buckley told whoppers that defied comprehension. She claimed that the king and queen of England stayed at her parents' Vancouver home when visiting Canada , a known falsehood. She once angered her son to near matricidal thoughts when she claimed — meanly, one must say – in front of a granddaughter of the Kennedy family (and friend of CB's daughter) that she served on the jury in the trial of Michael Skakel (a Kennedy offspring), who had been convicted of murdering a local girl.

How did his famous father deal with these mendacious and even malicious tall tales: "When Mum was in full prevarication, Pup would assume an expression somewhere between a Jack Benny stare and the stoic grimace of a thirteenth-century saint being burned at the stake." CB himself acknowledged, "No one in the history of hostessing has ever set a better dinner table than my Mum, but on such evenings, I would rather have supped with al-Qaeda in a guano-strewn cave."

Bill Buckley rarely contradicted her, no doubt to avoid a scene or risk embarrassing his wife. (CB suggests his Mum was tough enough to intimidate an entire division of infantry.) Mrs. Buckley had a way about her that made normal interaction a challenge. CB acknowledges that he had sent her many letters over the years rebuking her for her assaults on guests, her temper tantrums (one gathers) or otherwise outrageous behavior. He found some of these letters, unopened, after her death.

Like most married couples, the Buckleys had their issues and CB suggests that they were often not speaking, even as they went through the paces of keeping their marriage together. Mrs. Buckley's rejoinder, each time her fearless husband took her into harm's way on the sailboat, is funny and telling: "Bill, why are you trying to kill us."

The elder Buckley could be challenging, too, in different ways. He apparently did not easily admit error though he had a diplomatic way of asserting his authority. Confronted with his father's obstinacy regarding his mother's memorial, CB did what any son faced with the great man's resistance would do: "call Aunt Pitts." Priscilla Buckley, elder sister and long-time managing editor of National Review, the magazine Bill founded, was the person most able to change brother Bill's mind.

There are the obligatory recitations of hurts, annoyances and insensitivities that every normal family endures. How does a father, for example, leave his son's college graduation and take the rest of the family with him to have lunch, before the ceremony is even over, leaving the honored son alone? (Then again, how did the rest of the family in attendance go along with it – Bill's excuse: "I figured you had other plans.")

CB's accounts of his father's love of sailing in the most difficult weather imaginable are apparently funny only in retrospect: Bill why are you trying to kill us. He admits his father was the bravest man he knew, but even so….

When Bill thanks CB for taking care of him, he adds "I would have done the same for you." CB is not convinced – and recalls that he had, as a child, spent three weeks in a hospital without a visit from his father. He adds, as if it were an after thought, that his father happened to be in South Africa at the time and yet changed flights a half dozen times in order to get back once he heard the situation was serious.

He complains about his father's channel surfing, his horrific driving, his refusal to wear a seatbelt, his inability to remember things, his public peeing, the expectation that certain needs will simply be met by someone. It is all part of the familial experience – just on a larger stage, as CB told one reporter.

Why do children feel this need to catalogue their parents' failings? We are, almost, all guilty of it. I had one of the loveliest fathers on the planet, but every now and then I would find myself lamenting his strident political views, or his inability to captain a sailboat without imposing on those of us trying to learn the ropes, if you will. My brother used to perform an entire hilarious routine (slightly exaggerated) of the way my father ordered toast at Denny's; it could take a while.

There are two answers, the first being obvious: it is a sign of filial affection to find the humor in the humanity of our parents. I also suspect we allow our insecurities about who we are dictate how we react to our parents' and siblings' imperfections. Otherwise, Pat Buckley is about right when she would say, oh really, do pull yourself together. There is little to be gained by nursing resentments over the small missteps of life, particularly when you were blessed – as I was and as was CB – with genuinely loving parents. (We make allowance for those who grew up in truly horrible families.) CB knows this and acknowledges it, but clearly the book is part of his catharsis as he puts these slights behind him.

Yet he has done a service by including this detail, I suppose, because we learn – lo and behold – that even the rich and famous known for their grace and charm and immense talents are – in fact – in every detail as human as the rest of us. (What did Chesterton quip – we all want to be free to be our potty little selves?) They deal with the same issues — mortality, exhaustion, impatience, conflict, anger, resentment, petulance, honest disagreement. Se le vie. (Bobby Murcer, once asked to explain how playing for the Yankees was different than playing for other teams, remarked: the same, just more of it.).

The recounting of Bill Buckley's final year is particularly of interest to me, because I was communicating with him quite a bit via email and letter (as were many others, I am sure. I could not helping chuckling as Christopher described the incomprehensible emails his father would routinely send out, his typing failing him as surely as his health. Wherever his fingers landed, that is what he typed. On more than one occasion I found myself trying to guess where his fingers meant to land on the keyboard as I tried to decipher a note or comment.

I was also struck by how even a devoted son's knowledge of his father inevitably is limited. I don't mean that CB didn't know his father better than anyone else on the planet, but no son or daughter ever truly comprehends his or her parents. Their lives are far more complex and multi-layered than we can ever bring ourselves to admit.

What about their life before we came along? What about their secret fantasies, wishes, regrets? We might get glimpses of this world, but it is not the terrain most children enjoy walking – we want our parents to be our lions, to use CB's phrase describing his father, or even gods. But they are flawed humans with all the insecurities and failings we all have to one degree or another, even if they are – by nature – themselves reluctant to reveal these private parts of themselves. As our parents age and become more dependent, we are forced to grow up, and CB certainly does this as he takes us into that intimate space where he nursed his father, wrestled with him (literally) to keep him in the hospital as needed, tried to monitor his medications, often without success, and even discussed suicide on those days when his father's pain was near insufferable.

Yet the great man, during that same period, was living a separate life of which CB only had a partial view. Bill was entertaining, writing, sharing, supporting, reaching out to countless people even as he battled his medical situation and turned to his son for support. When I met with him one evening at his home, only months before his death, he was as lucid and as gracious as any man could be in his early 80s battling life-threatening illnesses.

This is a story of a son who found his parents exasperating at times (what normal child hasn't), but also of a son who loved his parents and greatly respected them.

His mother was generous to a fault in facilitating the career of her star husband, yet one senses this was her best self in many ways. And their son was, given the weight of being the only child of the most elegant couple in American politics since Jack and Jackie, remarkably graceful living in their shadow, even managing to carve out for himself a career as a humorist that is almost second to none.

I was most moved by the detailed recounting of putting his father to rest, perhaps because it is this part of the book that is least familiar to those of us who watched from a distance as these events unfolded. Buckley's description of taking his father's body back to the house at Stamford in a flag-draped coffin is quite beautiful.

"I'd transferred Mum's ashes from the brass plutonium canister to a red Chinese lacquered box I'd bought her years before for a birthday. I laid it on Pup's lap, so now they were together again. I put his rosary in his hands. Danny put in a jar of peanut butter. We looked at each other and simultaneously had the same thought. He went off and returned with the TV remote clicker and we put that in, too, and then we said one last good-bye, and I kissed him on the hair and we closed the lid and that was that. I pinned to the flag his Medal of Freedom. It looked heroic, and I was very proud of him."

His recounting of the public mass at St. Patrick's is also interesting. I suppose to this day I regret that I did not make the trip (though I was already writing a book length tribute to Bill), but that could not be managed, having visited him only a few months before. And yet it is strange how Christopher is prone to acknowledge the generosity of liberals and so cool toward conservatives who surely loved his father. He goes out of his way to observe that only one prominent Republican showed up (he surely meant Republican elected officials). He even makes note of John McCain's failure to send any acknowledgement, and then mentions with pleasure the gestures of John Kerry, Al Gore, and George McGovern.

Okay. Bad John McCain (let's hope this had nothing to do with CB's endorsement of Obama). On the other hand, he reports that President Bush called him. And Dick Cheney wanted to give a eulogy, which could not be managed logistically because the Catholic Church limited eulogies to two; it was CB's decision, and probably the right one, but there was certainly no lack of concern or respect from the Republican establishment. Nor is there any mention of the extended family at National Review, which no doubt turned out in droves.

I mention this only because this insistence on tweaking the right his father helped lead for so many years seems like a last act of child-like petulance. It might not be intended that way, but I know firsthand that many conservatives and Republicans turned out to show their respect in many sincere and devoted ways. Or are we simply to believe, as the left media insists, that all of us on the right are hard hearted. I hope not.

My only minor complaint is that CB did not include the full remarks he and Henry Kissinger made during the service. (I also lament that the service was not filmed and if it was, that it has not been made public – it surely was an event worthy of C-SPAN.)

This is a moving and riveting book. Christopher Buckley is – it bears repeating – a gifted writer with a good memory and an eye for detail. He understood that his father's death was an important event and he has documented it here for posterity with the respect, reverence and careful attention it deserved.

It is a simple but profound human story. Son will miss his mother. And his famous father. He is not alone. And one must say this on his behalf – that he had to share his father and to a lesser extent his mother with the nation in the most public ways for many years. That could not have always been easy, whatever the benefits of knowing presidents, publishers and magazine editors.

Just as it was no doubt hard for him to end this book (a final goodbye), so it was hard to finish reading it, representing as it does the symbolic end of an era and in a personal way the end of one of the great men to have graced our nation in recent times.