The Long Hello

Memory, My Mother, and Me

The moving memoir of caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s that broke new ground, changed the narrative, and prompted Maya Angelou to exclaim, “Joy!”
 
Since Cathie Borrie delivered her keynote performance at the World Alzheimer’s Day event, her self-published manuscript has won rapturous praise from noted writers and Alzheimer’s experts alike—from Maya Angelou, Lisa Genova, and Molly Peacock to Dr. Bill Thomas, Jed A. Levine of the Alzheimer’s Association, NYC, and Meryl Comer of the Geoffrey Beene Foundation Alzheimer’s Initiative.
 
The Long Hello distills the seven years the author spent caring for her mother into a page-turning account that offers insight into the “altering world of the dementia mind” (Francesca Rosenberg). During that time, Borrie recorded brief conversations she had with her mother that revealed the transformations within—and sometimes yielded an almost Zen-like poetry. She includes selections from them in chapters about her experience that are as evocative as diary entries. Her mother was the emotional pillar and sometime breadwinner in a home touched by a birth father’s alcoholism, a brother’s early death, divorce, and a stepfather’s remoteness. In Borrie’s spare prose, her mother’s story becomes a family’s story as well a deeply loving portrait that embraces life.
 
“A graceful dance between mother and daughter through the ever-changing rhythms of Alzheimer’s disease. Beautiful and profound in its telling, this story reveals the depth of poetry and creativity that the changing brain can muster along its journey. One of my favorite books on the topic!” —G. Allen Power, MD, author of Dementia Beyond Drugs and Dementia Beyond Disease