The Theft of Memory: Losing My Father, One Day at a Time, Jonathan Kozol. Kozol’s father, a neurologist and psychiatrist, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1994 and died in 2008. A touching account of a son’s struggle to maintain contact with his beloved, declining father.
Dancing Fish and Ammonites, Penelope Lively. In-depth reflections on aging.
Are You in a Caregiving Relationship and Don’t Know it? Finding the Balance of Loving and Caring, Wendy Packer and Linda J. Parker. Emphasizes importance of caring for one’s self while caring for others.
What If It’s Not Alzheimer’s? A Caregiver’s Guide to Dementia, Gary Radin and Lisa Radin. The only book we could find back in 2009 that dealt specifically with FTD. Offers important practical advice and a thorough list of resources.
To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed, Alix Kate Shulman. Shulman’s husband suffers a traumatic brain injury, forever changing their lives. This beautifully written memoir tells the story of how she copes with the changes and continues to love her diminished husband.
A Three Dog Life, Abigail Thomas. After a tragic accident that leaves her husband so severely brain damaged that he must be institutionalized, Thomas struggles to maintain a relationship with the man who still offers glimpses of his old, loving self. She also struggles to build a new life.
The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss, George A. Bonanno. This offers a more complex, and ultimately more positive, look at the grieving process than our simplistic understanding of grief as a rigid five-step process.
The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People Who Have Alzheimer Disease, Related Dementias, and Memory Loss, Nancy L. Mace and Peter V. Rabins
Marilyn Reynolds is the author of 10 books of realistic teen fiction in the “True-to-Life Series from Hamilton High,” a book for educators, I Won’t Read and You Can’t Make Me: Reaching Reluctant Teen Readers, and a collection of personal essays, Over 70 and I Don’t Mean MPH. She started work on ’Til Death or Dementia Do Us Part shortly after her husband, Michael Reynolds, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in 2009. She hopes that others may gain a degree of insight and understanding through this account of her struggles to meet the financial, physical, and emotional challenges that occurred with her bright, talented, and loving husband’s passage through FTD.
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