Sharing our caregiving experience can be a powerful way to help others. When we know that other people have gone through difficult experiences like we must face it gives us encouragement for the journey. My book The Sea is Wide: A Memoir of Caregiving is the story of my journey with my paternal grandfather (Grandpa Purdy) through Alzheimer’s. But not many people know that my maternal grandfather (Grandpa O’Keefe) also suffered from Alzheimer’s and passed away this June. In the last months of his life I wrote several essays about his struggle. The first I published a while ago on this (“What Once Was and Shall be“) and now I have added two more essays about the last weeks of his life:
- Falling Slowly. In such places it seems an intolerable thing that love so often hides behind scorned service, and the greatest sacrifices are often the most reviled.
- When All Stories End. He wanted to be an island fortress to himself, and now nobody will know him better in this life.
I hope you get a chance to read them. I think they will touch your heart.
