Jeanne Murray Walker - The Geography of Memory: A Pilgrimage Through Alzheimers

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Some of the names of people in the work have been changed to protect their privacy.

Copyright 2013 Jeanne Murray Walker

Cover design by JuLee Brand

Jacket photography by: Historic Map Works, LLC; Jody Dole; Cavan Images; Michael Blann - Getty Images

Cover copyright 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the authors intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the authors rights.

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First ebook edition: September 2013

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Excerpt from Little Gidding from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot. Copyright 1942 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company; Copyright renewed 1970 by T.S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Also published outside the U.S. by Faber and Faber Ltd. Used by permission

The Geography of Memory is represented by D.C. Jacobson & Associates LLC, an Author Management Company.

ISBN 978-1-4555-4500-1

Alzheimers and the death of a parent is a journey that others have told us about but few with such penetration and humane wisdom as Jeanne Walker. Her story is a map of memory with mythical overtones, by which I mean that while its shape is recognizable, its details are utterly unique. I read it, mesmerized, wondering my way through this deeply moving portrait of a mother, a daughter, a family. Against expectation we are invited to join their hilarious, daunting dance: a boogie of decline whose haunting music persists.

Luci Shaw, poet, author of The Crime of Living Cautiously and What the Light Was Like, writer in residence at Regent College

With THE GEOGRAPHY OF MEMORY, Jeanne Murray Walker, a master wordsmith, takes us on a journeydare I say sacred pilgrimageinto the inner world of Alzheimers. While Walker does not flinch from the calamities and sorrows of this journey, she also provides us with fresh glimpses into hidden joys and startling surprises along the way. I commend THE GEOGRAPHY OF MEMORY to you.

Richard J. Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline and Sanctuary of the Soul

In a kind of family alchemy, a mothers failing memory somehow excites the synapses of her daughters. The result is a child-adult memoir of grace, poignancy, and rich compassion.

Philip Yancey, bestselling author

As the lively, witty, energetic character who was her mother begins to become hopelessly lost in Alzheimers, poet Jeanne Walker readily shoulders her share of caregiving, a commitment of love requiring three-hour plane rides: disrupting the rhythms of her own life as a wife, mother, and professor, disquieting her with grief, and taxing her relationship with her beloved sister almost to the breaking point. Yet the narrative as a whole says much more. At some point, knowing so well the story of her mothers life, Walker begins to find her crazy communications intelligiblerealizing that her mother is talking in metaphors and understanding them. The farther away her mother wanders, the closer their relationship. The love between them strengthens. Trying to follow the details of her mothers life as she recalls them, now, in fragments, Walker finds to her surprise that she is not only recovering her own childhood memories but also understanding them in a new waya set of insights ranking among the most precious of her life. In plainsong prose evoking her heartland roots, Jeanne Walker locates the gifts to be found in the darkest days of a loved ones decline and death, a story of redemption that will inform and encourage anyone caring or expecting to care for ill and aging parentsor anyone at all.

Peggy Anderson, author of New York Times bestsellers Nurse and Childrens Hospital

Alzheimers is a word that strikes terror in most of us, particularly as we and our parents age. Poet Jeanne Murray Walkers memoir of her pilgrimage through her mothers illness and death doesnt gloss over the difficulties, but it removes the terror. What remains is a sturdy witness to unexpected meanings and beauties and even humor that surface in lives of faith and suffering. A friend once told me Anything can be endured if you make a story of it. This magnificently written story is the latest evidence.

Eugene H. Peterson, professor emeritus of Spiritual Theology, Regent College, Vancouver, B.C.

Jeanne Murray Walkers story of a mother with Alzheimers, like reports from other recent conflicts, is disorienting. How could it be otherwise? There are no front lines, no clear distinctions between friends and enemies. How did this war even get started? How will it endand what would victory look like? Maybe, she suggests, we need to see this disease with fresh eyes. As I spent thousands of hours with her, Walker says of her mother, I began to recover my own past. Theres nothing syrupy about this book, but its full of joy as well as sorrow. What a gift she has given us.

John Wilson, editor, Books & Culture

Jeanne Murray Walker has written one of the most elegant, tender, and intelligent memoirs of Alzheimers I have read. At once heart-wrenching and richly rewarding, intimate and objective, coldly cutting, and full of clear-eyed promise, THE GEOGRAPHY OF MEMORY is a beautiful gathering of moments: an artful mosaic of shards that builds to a portrait of faith and hope and love.

Bret Lott, author of Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian and Jewel

In describing her mothers long passage into dementia and its reverberations through a family, Jeanne Murray Walker has given us a powerful tale of loss but also renewal, pain but also love. In simple yet beautiful language, she shows how the light of hope and grace can illuminate even the darkest journey. For many, many readers THE GEOGRAPHY OF MEMORY will be a treasure.

Alan Jacobs, author of The Narnian

Those of us whove accompanied a beloved parent through the valley of the shadow will instantly recognize the terrain in this lyrical and profoundly wise account of aging unto death. Jeanne Murray Walkers THE GEOGRAPHY OF MEMORY is, hands down, one of the most beautiful books Ive ever read.