The author’s mother endured a 20-year journey with Alzheimer’s disease, and he and his wife Shari played a critical role in the last six years of managing her at-home care until she died at 95. They simultaneously cared for his father who had been his mom’s chief caregiver until the age of 90, when he fell backward down a stairwell, landed on his head, and suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury. He entered a state of dementia quite suddenly, and Eliezer and Shari moved into his parent’s house—his childhood home—that very night.
Gradually, over time, he discovered that in addition to the obvious tragic and sometimes violent stages of the disease progression, there were simultaneously many moments of genuine joy, laughter and deep healing that occurred for him and his family. At one point he actually found himself being grateful to Alzheimer’s for restoring the mother-son love that had been mostly strained for much of his adult life.
This memoir of those caregiving years is an attempt to provide a balance to all the sad and often horrific accounts of Alzheimer’s that are available in abundance, by instead sharing the “silver lining” he discovered that recast his whole experience in a positive light, and he hopes to share that possibility and opportunity with others, while not sugarcoating the many difficult trials they also endured.
