A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
An essential book for those coping with Alzheimer's and other
cognitive disorders that "reframe[s] our understanding of dementia
with sensitivity and accuracy . . . to grant better futures to our loved
ones and ourselves" (The New York Times).
An estimated fifty million people in the world suffer from dementia.
Diseases such as Alzheimer's erase parts of one's memory but are also
often said to erase the self. People don't simply die from such
diseases; they are imagined, in the clichés of our era, as vanishing in
plain sight, fading away, or enduring a long goodbye. In On Vanishing,
Lynn Casteel Harper, a Baptist minister and nursing home chaplain,
investigates the myths and metaphors surrounding dementia and aging,
addressing not only the indignities caused by the condition but also by
the rhetoric surrounding it. Harper asks essential questions about the
nature of our outsized fear of dementia, the stigma this fear may
create, and what it might mean for us all to try to "vanish well."
Weaving together personal stories with theology, history, philosophy,
literature, and science, Harper confronts our elemental fears of
disappearance and death, drawing on her own experiences with people with
dementia both in the American healthcare system and within her own
family. In the course of unpacking her own stories and encounters--of
leading a prayer group on a dementia unit; of meeting individuals
dismissed as "already gone" and finding them still possessed of complex,
vital inner lives; of witnessing her grandfather's final years with
Alzheimer's and discovering her own heightened genetic risk of
succumbing to the disease--Harper engages in an exploration of dementia
that is unlike anything written before on the subject.
A rich and startling work of nonfiction, On Vanishing reveals
cognitive change as it truly is, an essential aspect of what it means to
be mortal.
