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Book Description
"When Forgetting Is a Gift," the true story of Kathleen Clary Miller and her father, Bill Clary, is set to become the classic on Alzheimer1s in the family.It is a book Alzheimer1s families will read with a tissue in one hand and a pen in the other. Cathartic and prescriptive both, this moving and beautifully written work meets the demand for a book that shares this life-altering experience with others similarly affected, who are, literally, crying out to know that they are not alone. Despite a plethora of books focusing on the medical aspects of Alzheimer1s, there is little that speaks directly to the experience of surrendering a loved one to Alzheimer1s. As Miller says, "I wrote this book because it wasn1t there." Here, at last there is help. It is time for this beautiful little book to speak for itself.
Beginning as a three-part series in the Orange County Register, Miller's stirring account has since been published across the country and appeared in excerpt in the Fall 2007 Johns Hopkins Memory Bulletin with an introduction by Dr. Peter V. Rabins, codirector of the Johns Hopkins Medical School Division of Geriatric and Neuropsychiatry, and author of The 36-Hour Day.
Author's Note:
"My father went from being as healthy as an ox to overnight being unable to recognize the numeral 12 on a piece of paper—not just that it was the number 12, but that 12 was a number at all. After the diagnosis of Alzheimer's, I was as convicted as ever to care for him at home with me, where he had been for the twelve years since my mother died. I had promised him that the one thing I would never, ever do was put him in a facility. I had to break that promise when he began to fall, hospice came in, and doctors directed that he was no longer safe at home. I thought I could do anything for Daddy, until there was nothing left to do—but check him in against his will."
"When I plopped down with a venti black coffee on the floor of a renowned book store that stocked every book on the Alzheimer's shelf, there was nothing there for me. Eyes red and swollen from days of crying, I poured over books that had everything for the caregiver and the patient, but nothing for me—the grieving family member who needed forgiveness. I needed someone to tell me what to expect and how to cope with committing my father to a lockdown facility after I'd promised I would never put him into 'one of those places.' I exhausted every possibility. By the time I gave up, I knew everything about the disease but nothing about how to survive turning the person I loved most on this earth over to strangers. There was everything clinical but nothing to help me mend both our broken hearts. I wrote this book because it wasn't there."
Kathleen Clary Miller is the author of over 400 essays and stories that have appeared in such publications as Newsweek Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Hartford Courant, The Los Angeles Times, The Pasadena Star-News, The Orange County Register, Orange Coast Magazine, Missoula Living Magazine, Flathead Living Magazine, The Johns Hopkins Memory Bulletin, and The Christian Science Monitor. For two years, she was a regular columnist for The Missoulian . Her column "High on the Wild" appears quarterly in the Pines Literary Journal and her column "Peaks and Valleys" appears monthly in Montana Woman Magazine. She has contributed to National Public Radio's On Point.
She is the author of "The Man In My Mailbox" and "Gone Fishing--My New Life in the Last Best Place."
She lives in the woods of The Ninemile Valley, west of Missoula, MT.
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