Summary

In poetry and prose the writer chronicles her father's final months as Alzheimer's disease progressively seals him into a world where those who love him can't follow. Each short segment details a moment on the writer's journey as witness to his losses: moments of confusion--his and her own, uncertainty about appropriate diplomacy, invention of new activities and rituals to keep him linked to love and alive.

With sure, spare language, she sketches in her own memories, bits of family stories, irrational feelings, the different way she comes to look at home, at family relationships, even at familiar objects. More a song than a story, the collection of vignettes offers both comfort and realism to those on similar journeys of slow loss.

Commentary

Though the collection is number 8 in the Marie Alexander Poetry Series, much of it, though poetic, is prose. Short lyric poems are interspersed among one-to three-page sketches, each offering material for reflection on what one writer has called a "complex sorrow." The book thus provides a helpful complement to more practical works for those living with Alzheimer's patients. It is a gift, especially to adults who find themselves surprised into a kind of grief at slow loss whose pain is amplified by uncertainty and estrangement.

Publisher

White Pine Press

Place Published

Buffalo, N.Y.

Edition

2005

Page Count

126