Review: All Gone: A Memoir of My Mother's Dementia With Refreshments by Alex Witchel

Dear Literary Loves,
I'm spending the last two weeks of 2013 reading several memoirs, one of which is entitled All Gone:  A Memoir of My Mother's Dementia With Refreshments by Alex Witchel.  Since I have never experienced having a parent with severe dementia or Alzheimer's disease I thought it might be interesting to see how a Generation Xer or Baby Boomer handles losing a parent to this type of illness.  First, the author's mom develops dementia as a result of a blocked artery that leads to a series of strokes affecting the memory portion of her brain.  This type of dementia does not progress as quickly as dementia due to Alzheimer's.  And you generally will not see the structural changes in the patient's brain as you would with a person suffering from Alzheimer's disease. 

Ms. Witchel's mom is one heavy feminist and I have to say I was impressed.  The woman taught school and put herself through college in order to obtain a doctorate.  She had four children and was proud to put meals on the table for her family each evening.  She really didn't care if other mothers who devoted their lives to their children looked upon her in a disdainful manner.  She led the life of her dreams and that is what I really admired about her.  Part of what Ms. Witchel associates with the concept of home is her mother's cooking which could get creative at times.  Hence, you will find numerous recipes throughout the book.  It's the realization that her mother is losing her grasp on executive function, or the steps involved in accomplishing a given task, that the family first realizes something is quite wrong with their mother. 

What causes a stroke?  Well, the biggest factor can be smoking and according to the specialist treating Ms. Witchel's mom, that is largely what gave rise to her mother's stroke-related dementia.  The first signs of this dementia occur when Ms. Witchel asks her mother for family recipes and when she goes to make some of those recipes, her mother has left out a portion or the recipe is completedly different from what Ms. Witchel remembers it to be.  There comes a time when the mom forgets how to cook period.  When the author's mom can no longer work as a professor or follow a lecture, she tells the family she has lost her confidence.  She has lost this because she's losing some of the best parts of herself.  This leads to visiting a host of doctors; most are good at dealing with the disease, but there is one specialist neither Alex or her mother would want to see again.  More alarms go off when her mother does not recall her grandson, that a daughter has cancer, and why she was taken to the emergency room upon having fallen at home.  Alex utilizes cooking as a means of remembering her mother as she once was as well as to escape from the bombardment of decisions she must make regarding her mother's care, surgeries, medication, etc.  Alex gets to a point where she is so wrapped up in her mother's care, she forgets to care for herself and at times, her husband.  This is familiar territory for me as this happened to me helping my father through a stem cell transplant. 

I think what saves Ms. Witchel is the realization that part of who someone is to you is your perception of them.  So in the end, Ms. Witchel knows that her mother is physically there with the family, but oftentimes not mentally or emotionally like the mother the family once new.  And that's okay because there are times when Ms. Witchel does see a twinkling light of recognition that her mother, as she once was, is still inside the woman sitting at lunch with her.  In the end what we see is how one woman is balancing career, marriage, and caretaking today in a similar, but different manner than her mother did for her own family members previously.   You definitely see the commonalities between mother and daughter throughout the book in what they value and how they lead their lives.  And to me, that's the best gift any mother could leave with a daughter particularly when they both are admirable, noble, and strong-willed women of different generations.
Until my next review,
Grace (Amy)