Strange Relation: A Memoir of Marriage, Dementia, and Poetry

"[A] thoughtful and lucid tale of love, companionship, and heartbreaking illness." —Lydia Davis

In 2004 Rachel Hadas's husband, George Edwards, a composer and professor of music at Columbia University, was diagnosed with early-onset dementia at the age of sixty-one. Strange Relation is her account of "losing" George. Her narrative begins when George's illness can no longer be ignored, and ends in 2008 soon after his move to a dementia facility (when, after thirty years of marriage, she finds herself no longer living with her husband). Within the cloudy confines of those difficult years, years when reading and writing were an essential part of what kept her going, she "tried to keep track… tried to tell the truth."

"A piercingly honest account of life with a brilliant man as he descends into dementia." —Reeve Lindbergh

"If only all doctors and nurses and social workers who care for the chronically ill could read this book. If only patients and family members stricken with such losses could receive what this book can give them." —Rita Charon, MD, PhD, Program in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University

"Like an elegy, Strange Relation is about loss and grief. Like all elegies, it also memorializes and celebrates." —Robert Pinsky

"Strange Relation snaps with bravery, intelligence, and Hadas's tart, candid wisdom." —Molly Peacock

Rachel Hadas is Board of Governors Professor of English at Rutgers University in Newark. She is the author of many books, including The River of Forgetfulness, Laws, Indelible, and Halfway Down the Hall: New & Selected Poems. She co-edited the anthology The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present.