The Freedom of Alzheimer’s

The Long Hello: Memory, My Mother and Me is a lyrical memoir—a hands-on, all-in, profoundly sensitive story that recounts Cathie Borrie’s thoughts and emotions as she cares for her mother, Jo, through her last years with Alzheimer’s. Jo, widowed, is in her mid eighties and is able to live alone in her own home thanks only to daily visits from Cathie. As the disease progresses, a constant rotation of live-in caregivers come and go, hired to help but never staying long enough to gain the confidence of Cathie or Jo.

Borrie holds nothing back in her writing and so we come to know the joy she discovers in the caregiving role. In an interview she describes how she started to view her mother’s world not as diminished but as a parallel one, possibly even elevated. As for her frustrations, “I try not to think about where I am and what I do all day or the things I used to do and miss...