Stolen Memories : One Family's Experience with Alzheimer's Disease

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Summary: An honest, touching account of one daughter's experience
Review: For anyone who has lived with a family member who has Alzheimer's or another type of dementia, this book will be both a mirror and a comfort. Written in plainspoken, painfully honest language, Stolen Memories chronicles a daughter's experiences and feelings as she slowly loses a beloved mother to the ravages of Alzheimer's. The effects on herself and her family, the myriad ways with which she tried to cope with both her mother's disease and her own despair and guilt are touchingly told, without an ounce of self-pity. Ultimately this becomes a story not just of pain but of hope--- hope that in the future other families may be spared this experience through new research aimed at combatting this disease but also hope in the present that those who have to companion someone through 'stolen memories' can survive it themselves and become stronger and more whole individuals through that survival. As someone who grew up with a live-in grandmother who suffered dementia, the experiences in this book rang deeply true to me and helped me understand both my own and my mother's experiences better. I recommend Stolen Memories to anyone seeking the solace of knowing they are not alone in the toll that dementia can take on a family and the inspiration of witnessing Marie Cloud's capacity to overcome her own devastation.

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Summary: A Journey Past Forgetting
Review: In January 1993, Marie Cloud's mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, but that diagnosis came only after several years of slow recognition of a mounting problem. Cloud's account of her family's journey with her mother down the dark, frightening and ever degenerating path of this illness may seem halting at times, but she never fails to reveal the brutal truths of her own responses to the loss of her mother bit by painful bit. The poignancy of Marie Cloud's story, the importance of it not only to the children and other relatives of Alzheimer's patients but to all baby boomers who are now facing health crises in their parents as well, make this a book well worth reading. Its portrayal of a woman with grown children of her own struggling with her feelings of inadequacy in the face of this impossible and terrifying illness is uncompromising. In one of the most moving moments in the book, Cloud, battling the guilt of having placed her mother in a nursing home against her mother's earlier wishes, suffers a nervous breakdown and begins psychotherapy. One wonders if Stolen Memories would have been possible had she not fallen completely apart and required help. I highly recommend this book to all who feel alone in the dark cavern of living with and still trying to love aging and deteriorating parents.