Death in Slow Motion: A Memoir of a Daughter, Her Mother, and the Beast Called Alzheimer's Book

I think there's a special club for those of us who have lost our mothers. There's something so devastating about that loss that I don't think you truly appreciate it until you're faced with it yourself. And there's a particularly devastating pain in watching your mother suffer and die before your eyes.

For me, that devastation came in watching my mother suffer physical deterioration as she fought against metastatic breast cancer. I remember every detail of our last couple conversations and wince in pain when I think of her weary eyes as she confessed to me in one of our last conversations, "I just want to fall asleep and never wake up again." But there were good moments too - like when a bird landed nearby as we sat on her rural California deck. "What's that?" I asked her, having long ago taught her all the native birds. "A titmouse," she replied. "I still remember everything you taught me."

Ah yes, memories. Towards the end of my mother's life, I pried her memories, desperately trying to capture every little tidbit about her life. Even on that last day of her life, I showed her photos from the family album, and asked her to share her remembrances. The thought of losing her mind, her memories, our common experiences, was the most frightening thing to me.

I've been thinking a lot about my mother's death lately, as I have been reading Eleanor Cooney's masterful memoir, Death in Slow Motion, and I realize how lucky I was to be able to capture memories from my mother during those final weeks. Eleanor wasn't so fortunate: her mother, a vibrant, intelligent author (Mary Durant), ending up dying a slow, torturous, dignity-shredding death from Alzheimer's disease. Many years before her body died, Durant lost her ability to store and retrieve memories, her personality disintegrating before Cooney's eyes. Can anything be more terrifying?

One of the things I most appreciate about Death In Slow Motion is Cooney's unflinching honesty about her own guilt, frailty, and regret in the way she handled her mother's decline. After initially trying to care for her mother herself, she realized the strain of being a primary caretaker was destroying both her relationship and her sanity. She turned to care homes for help and then was faced with intense guilt and regret when she discovered they weren't taking such great "care" after all. At one point, she looks at a photograph of her mother gazing up at her with trust in her eyes and contemplates how she shattered that trust, and - the guilt, the unimaginable guilt! Oh, how I know that guilty feeling - like the guilt I feel every time I think of my mother showing me her scraped knees that she suffered trying to walk down to the laundry room beneath the house only a couple of weeks before she died. Why wasn't I doing the laundry for her? Why did I let her down??? Oh, Regret - you merciless ghost!

That's not to say that Death In Slow Motion is a book of regret. Cooney spends a large amount of the book painting a vivid portrait of her younger mother as an intelligent, witty woman who lived, by and large, a full, inspiring, and happy life. Although early relationships were rocky, Durant found the love of her life when she met environmentalist Michael Harwood, with whom she researched and penned their masterpiece, On The Road with John James Audubon. However, Harwood's death at the age of just 55-years-old was a heartbreak that she could not overcome; this tragedy very likely hastened her decline. It actually came as a warped sort of blessing when Durant reached an advanced stage of dementia and no longer seemed tormented by constant thoughts of Harwood's death.

It may seem strange to say, but I didn't find Death In Slow Motion to be a depressing read, despite its subject matter. It's very sad, yes, but more than anything, I found the book inspiring. It's like a literary version of the old tombstone inscription:

Passenger stop as you pass by
As you are now, so once was I
As I am now, so you shall be
Prepare for death and follow me.

Stories like this remind us that life is short, the future is uncertain, and we should all do what makes us happy while our precious minds and limbs are still under our control.