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Death in Slow Motion

A Memoir of a Daughter, Her Mother, and the Beast Called Alzheimer's

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Death in Slow Motion

By: Eleanor Cooney
Narrated by: Pam Ward
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About this listen

When her once-glamorous and witty novelist-mother got Alzheimer's, Eleanor Cooney moved her from her beloved Connecticut home to California in order to care for her. In tense, searing prose, punctuated with the blackest of humor, Cooney documents the slow erosion of her mother's mind, the powerful bond the two shared, and her own descent into drink and despair.

But the coping mechanism that finally serves this eloquent writer best is writing, the ability to bring to vivid life the memories her mother is losing. As her mother gropes in the gathering darkness for a grip on the world she once loved, succeeding only in conjuring sad fantasies of places and times with her late husband, Cooney revisits their true past. Death in Slow Motion becomes the mesmerizing story of Eleanor's actual childhood, straight out of the pages of John Cheever; the daring and vibrant mother she remembers; and a time that no longer exists for either of them.

©2003 Eleanor Cooney (P)2020 Tantor Art & Literature Authors Brain & Nervous System Medicine & Health Care Industry Parenting & Families Parents & Adult Children Physical Illness & Disease Women Memoir Witty

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All stars
Most relevant
This is not the usual very sad memories of people looking after someone with Alzheimers. This is a brutally honest tale of the guilt and horrors of doing this: guilt; how it affects your family; split loyalties; affording decent care; trauma of clearing out your parents home when one of them is still alive; lies you have to tell; not being recognised; witnessing the decline of your parent, its all here. I live in England, not USA, my mum is 98 and still with us but so much of this rings true, you are not alone in this struggle.

Not for the faint-hearted

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