The Longest Goodbye A Family S Hope Filled Journey Through Alzheimer S

Are we ever ready to say goodbye? She looked out into the yard sprinkled with spring dandelions. "Yellow flowers," she said, searching for her words. We knew something wasn't right. That's when things began to fall apart for our family, when our longest goodbye journey began-the defining before-and-after moment. And now, looking back, it's been almost a decade of slow loss and drawn-out grief as we slowly let go of our beautiful mom. In the middle of it all, though, we have learned to look for hope and chase down joy, discovering that, in spite of our pain, there are always gifts to be found, even on the hardest of days. Alzheimer's disease affects almost fifty million people worldwide. It touches people across every walk of life. So, how do millions of people figure out how to love as they let go? The Longest Goodbye is a collection of stories and moments not just about the clinical side of memory loss-but the emotional heart journey. It is a story that shows how joy and grief are often intertwined and wrapped up together in the glorious mess of life. The Longest Goodbye encourages readers to remember the ones they love while they are still here and to intentionally celebrate and live through the pain and hard days. It's filled with tears, hope, and bitter-sweet moments all held together by the beautiful love of a mother and daughter holding onto a life filled with memories, while learning to let go and say goodbye. "Losing a parent is one of life's most difficult moments and, in some cases, a difficult season. Shelly's heartwarming, poignant, personal account of her decade-long journey of saying goodbye to her mom who suffered from memory loss will be a source of comfort and hope to anyone going through a similar experience." Carey Nieuwhof Bestselling Author, Speaker, and Host of the Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast "In The Longest Goodbye, Shelly gives us hope and help to navigate when a loved one faces memory loss. Shelly shares her decade-long journey watching her mother decline with Alzheimer's disease. Through heartfelt stories and reflections, she gives her readers a glimpse into the pain of seeing a loved one slowly fade away while at the same time looking for hope-filled moments along the way. Shelly expresses how joy and pain can co-exist and where to look when everything feels lost. And most of all, her experience shows how the bonds of family and unconditional love carried her through. This book isn't about the clinical part of the disease; it's about the heart and how to hold on through all the seasons of memory loss." Kevin Scott Author, Leadership Expert, and Co-founder of ADDO "It's much easier to write fiction than to share a hard, human story of love and loss for others to read. Shelly has brilliantly authored pages that share the hard and the good of loving someone fiercely, while losing them slowly to Alzheimer's. Shelly is both honest and honoring with her words as she draws the reader into the journey of the one thing she feared most-her mother's diagnosis and slow decline due to Alzheimer's. Shelly's words paint a stunning picture of a brave and tender response to human suffering. Be moved in the reading of this beautiful remembrance." Cathie Ostapchuk Author of Brave Women, Bold Moves Co-Founder and Lead Catalyst for Gather Women Host of The Strong Way Podcast

Are we ever ready to say goodbye? She looked out into the yard sprinkled with spring dandelions. “Yellow flowers,” she said, searching for her words. We knew something wasn’t right. That’s when things began to fall apart for our family, when our longest goodbye journey began—the defining before-and-after moment. And now, looking back, it’s been almost a decade of slow loss and drawn-out grief as we slowly let go of our beautiful mom. In the middle of it all, though, we have learned to look for hope and chase down joy, discovering that, in spite of our pain, there are always gifts to be found, even on the hardest of days. Alzheimer’s disease affects almost fifty million people worldwide. It touches people across every walk of life. So, how do millions of people figure out how to love as they let go? The Longest Goodbye is a collection of stories and moments not just about the clinical side of memory loss–but the emotional heart journey. It is a story that shows how joy and grief are often intertwined and wrapped up together in the glorious mess of life. The Longest Goodbye encourages readers to remember the ones they love while they are still here and to intentionally celebrate and live through the pain and hard days. It’s filled with tears, hope, and bitter-sweet moments all held together by the beautiful love of a mother and daughter holding onto a life filled with memories, while learning to let go and say goodbye.

#1 Amazon Best Seller in Memoirs category (June 2013) #7 Amazon Best Seller in Dementia (June 2013) #3 Amazon's "Most Wished For" in Dementia Category (June 2013) A Daughter's Newfound Love When Lisa Hirsch found out her mother, Ruth, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, her love, appreciation, and caring for her mother was transformed. To Lisa's surprise, it has brought her and Ruth closer together than they've ever been. My Mom My Hero tells the story of this mother-daughter relationship through a series of entries from Lisa's internationally popular blog. Ultimately this is an uplifting and inspirational book for anyone who's going through the difficult and often lonely ordeal of caring for a loved one who suffers from this devastating illness. "My Mom My Hero is filled with love and a deep appreciation for the human spirit." -Laura Stein, best-selling author "This book is a rare gift for anyone who reads it." -Holly Robinson, author of Sleeping Tigers and The Wishing Hill "My Mom My Hero is a light of inspiration in a world that can be dark and frustrating." -Franz Wisner, New York Times best-selling author of Honeymoon With My Brother and How the World Makes Love

With the heartfelt prose of a loving daughter, Patti Davis provides a life raft for the caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients. “For the decade of my father’s illness, I felt as if I was floating in the deep end, tossed by waves, carried by currents, but not drowning,” writes Patti Davis in this searingly honest and deeply moving account of the challenges involved in taking care of someone stricken with Alzheimer’s. When her father, the fortieth president of the United States, announced his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in an address to the American public in 1994, the world had not yet begun speaking about this cruel, mysterious disease. Yet overnight, Ronald Reagan and his immediate family became the face of Alzheimer’s, and Davis, once content to keep her family at arm’s length, quickly moved across the country to be present during “the journey that would take [him] into the sunset of [his] life.” Empowered by all she learned from caring for her father—about the nature of the illness, but also about the loss of a parent—Davis founded a support group for the family members and friends of Alzheimer’s patients. Along with a medically trained cofacilitator, she met with hundreds of exhausted and devastated attendees to talk through their pain and confusion. While Davis was aware that her own circumstances were uniquely fortunate, she knew there were universal truths about dementia, and even surprising gifts to be found in a long goodbye. With Floating in the Deep End, Davis draws on a welter of experiences to provide a singular account of battling Alzheimer’s. Eloquently woven with personal anecdotes and helpful advice tailored specifically for the overlooked caregiver, this essential guide covers every potential stage of the disease from the initial diagnosis through the ultimate passing and beyond. Including such tips as how to keep a loved one hygienic, and careful responses for when they drift to a time gone by, Davis always stresses the emotional milestones that come with slow-burning grief. Along the way, Davis shares how her own fractured family came together. With unflinching candor, she recalls when her mother, Nancy, who for decades could not show her children compassion or vulnerability, suddenly broke down in her arms. Davis also offers tender moments in which her father, a fabled movie star whom she always longed to know better, revealed his true self—always kind, even when he couldn’t recognize his own daughter. An inherently wise work that promises to become a classic, Floating in the Deep End ultimately provides hope to struggling families while elegantly illuminating the fragile human condition.

Ronald Reagan’s daughter writes with a moving openness about losing her father to Alzheimer’s disease. The simplicity with which she reveals the intensity, the rush, the flow of her feelings encompasses all the surprises and complexities that ambush us when death gradually, unstoppably invades life. In The Long Goodbye, Patti Davis describes losing her father to Alzheimer’s disease, saying goodbye in stages, helpless against the onslaught of a disease that steals what is most precious–a person’s memory. “Alzheimer’s,” she writes, “snips away at the threads, a slow unraveling, a steady retreat; as a witness all you can do is watch, cry, and whisper a soft stream of goodbyes.” She writes of needing to be reunited at forty-two with her mother (“she had wept as much as I over our long, embittered war”), of regaining what they had spent decades demolishing; a truce was necessary to bring together a splintered family, a few weeks before her father released his letter telling the country and the world of his illness . . . The author delves into her memories to touch her father again, to hear his voice, to keep alive the years she had with him. She writes as if past and present were coming together, of her memories as a child, holding her father’ s hand, and as a young woman whose hand is being given away in marriage by her father . . . of her father teaching her to ride a bicycle, of the moment when he let her go and she went off on her own . . . of his teaching her the difference between a hawk and a buzzard . . . of the family summer vacations at a rented beach house–each of them tan, her father looking like the athlete he was, with a swimmer’s broad shoulders and lean torso. . . . She writes of how her father never resisted solitude, in fact was born for it, of that strange reserve that made people reach for him. . . . She recalls him sitting at his desk, writing, staring out the window . . . and she writes about the toll of the disease itself, the look in her father’s eyes, and her efforts to reel him back to her. Moving . . . honest . . . an illuminating portrait of grief, of a man, a disease, and a woman and her father. With a preface written by the author for the eBook edition.

CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen tells the tender story of his wife's battle with Early Onset Alzheimer's.

In Caring for Mother, Virginia Stem Owens gives a clear and realistic account of caring for an elderly loved one. Along the way, Owens notes the spiritual challenges she encountered, not the least of which included fear of her own suffering and death. This book will be a helpful companion to those who have recently assumed the role of caregiver, helping them anticipate some of the emotional turbulence they will encounter along the way.

A powerful mix of memoir and hard-earned knowledge, in The Long Goodbye, Keri Kitay charts her family's poignant and devastating journey after their mother was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. When Keri Kitay's mother, Terry, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, nothing could have prepared her family for what lay ahead. The diagnosis and the years that followed rocked their world in unimaginable ways. In this powerful mix of memoir and hard-earned knowledge, Keri charts her family's journey: what life was like before Alzheimer's, the early signs that everybody missed, the day they got the shattering news, coming to terms with the grim prognosis . . . and most devastatingly, witnessing the woman they knew and loved slowly fade away. Poignant and moving, The Long Goodbye is a stirring account of losing a parent to the ravages of an unforgiving disease and a heartfelt exploration of what it means to face this with grace and dignity. This is a story about ordinary family ties which became extraordinary through necessity, about unbreakable bonds and unconditional love, and what holds us close even in the most heartbreaking of circumstances. 'A significant resource for anyone faced with dementia' PROFESSOR HENRY BRODATY