Esther Altshul Helfgott
kept a diary as her husband’s Alzheimer’s advanced, both to process her emotions and to help keep her husband’s memory alive. In her works Dear Alzheimer’s: A Caregiver’s Diary & Poems and Listening to Mozart: Poems of Alzheimer’s, she chronicles her experiences as caregiver and grieving spouse.
I, who have experienced the fragmentary life of motherhood coupled with illness and divorce, still cannot imagine a life more intellectually fragmented than one affected by the throes and challenges of Alzheimer’s. Here, in this diary, which has always been my document of life as battlefield, I not only work through conflicts concerning caregiving and self, but I also record my husband’s memories.
When watching a loved one slowly lose their faculties to disease, there is often a desire to capture the remnants of life. And so Helfgott explains,
I write you
onto the page
how else
to keep you with me––
memory fades your wrinkles
Following her husband’s death, she reflects,
It’s not that we had such a great marriage. Sometimes, we fought like cats and dogs. Separated, got back together, made up, but all that seems irrelevant now. He’s the most beautiful sight I see in a day. Not necessarily because I’m looking at someone I love (I love a lot of people) but because I’m witnessing a part of life that often goes unnoticed.
Helfgott’s words linger. What are the things that go unnoticed in our fragmented lives? Can we ease the pain of loss by being each other’s scribes?
Esther Altshul Helfgott will be reading from her works on November 9. Visit the calendar for more information.
