Remembering the Music, Forgetting the Words: Travels with Mom in the Land of Dementia

The words are my mother’s, scribbled after visiting my grandmother in a Massachusetts hospital. Nana lived well into her eighties, her last several years plagued by confusion beyond forgetfulness. My mother thought her mother was losing her mind, and it broke her heart. She began writing about it, and then she stopped. This, I understand. Twenty years later, my mother began to exhibit the signs of memory loss, and the last thing I wanted to do was to write about it.

To a writer, writing makes it real. Writing down real life renders it unforgettable. And some things, you just want to forget.

Or, deny.

Most of us are scared silly when faced with the prospect of diminishing mental capacity. We’d trade almost anything for the promise we could hold onto our judgment, our memory, our mind.

I used to feel that way myself.

Then, I traveled with my mother into the Land of Dementia. It was a difficult journey--no doubt about it--stressful, challenging, heart wrenching. But it was also a journey that clarified a complicated mother-daughter relationship, a journey that brought us together, a journey that allowed me to see my mother, even as she had trouble, on some days, seeing herself. Ultimately, it was a journey that required me to reach into the deepest part of myself, to discover compassion and patience, and to connect human-to-human with the woman who happened to be my mother.

It absolutely wasn’t easy. But it wasn’t absolutely awful, either. Not the way most of us imagine it will be. That’s why I decided--two years after my mother’s death--to write Remembering the Music, Forgetting the Words. I hope readers will find light here, and comfort, and humor, too. I haven’t written a book about Alzheimer’s, or a book about reluctant daughterhood, or a book about playing community music, or even a book about showing up here and now. I’m not great at writing about just one thing. Like all the writers I admire, I write about everything--hoping to uncover something true.