Praise for "Dear Alzheimer's: A Caregiver's Diary & Poems"(Cave Moon Press, 2013)
Poet Esther Altshul Helfgott chronicles her last seven years with her husband, pathologist Abe Schweid, in these devastating and redemptive diary entries and poems. Alzheimer’s is an awful illness, but as Helfgott writes, “Poetry… is a way to understand the awfulness of life and to use that awfulness as a tool for growth and change.” These intimate, powerful, brave poems are grounded in the searing fragmentary details of a caregiver’s daily life. Our own participation in Dear Alzheimer’s—in its mercy and its romance—is irresistible. Helfgott’s gift is reminding us to live in spite of and because.
Kathleen Flenniken, Washington State Poet Laureate 2012-2014, Author of Famous and Plume
If you know someone with Alzheimer’s disease, you need this book, for it will shed much-needed insight into this devastating disease. If you don’t, you’ll still gain a deep appreciation for the power and tenacity of love and a visceral understanding of the need for compassion on this difficult path. Dear Alzheimer’s is a unique and necessary addition to the growing shelf of literature about Alzheimer’s disease.
Holly J. Hughes, Editor, Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease
We must accept the truth that either our body or mind will outlive the other. Abe’s wife Esther has captured the story of his ordinary body outliving his exemplary mind. The poems and journal descriptions of her husband’s decline are as delicately made as one of Abe’s slides, and as carefully examined. When we are advised that love is all there is, we should temper that comfort with the realization that someone has to die first. The cost for loving is suffering absence. Helfgott has exposed that painful reality with tenderness, honesty, and beauty.
Richard Rapport, M.D.,Author of Physician: The Life of Paul Beeson and Nerve Endings: The Discovery of the Synapse
Esther's poems and diary entries immerse the reader into the complex, often heartbreaking world of the Alzheimer's caregiver. Her candor and willingness to share all aspects of the journey is inspiring. Like being in a good support group, readers will identify with Helfgott and gain perspective in their understanding of a spouse's life with Alzheimer's.
From the opening sentence of Esther Helfgott’s memoir, when her husband says, "I don't know where I am," the reader is pulled into this beautiful, raw, heart-wrenching account of their journey through Alzheimer's. This is a must read, not only for the millions of families affected by this horrific disease, but also for anyone dealing with the terminal illness of a loved one. Ms. Helfgott helps us learn that hardest lesson of all—how to let go and say goodbye.
Herein the only kind of language that will dare to enter imaginatively into its own, and our own disintegration – poetry - Esther teaches us what it means to have the courage to let go of what was, to let in what still is, and to let a new way of being us BE in the world. Entering into this dis-ease with Esther’s imagination has awakened me to the inestimably precious gift that we give each other when we meet each other, in love, in the midst of life's unraveling."
Michael Verde, Founder and President of Memory Bridge: The Foundation for Alzheimer’s and Cultural Memory"
An honest and touching renderingof an intricate and personal time/space altering experience expressed beautifully in diary and poetry. This book offers great benefit to caregivers, friends and professionals whose lives have been touched by Alzheimer’s disease.
This powerful and poignant memoir takes us through the labyrinth of loss and life that is Alzheimer’s and in doing so it raises questions about the nature of ‘self’ and of relationship. The book is drenched in a beauty that comes out of prolonged but contained pain. It is a book to savor, one through which to meander with an open questioning mind, and a curiosity both about what it is like to be the carer of a loved one who struggles with a life changing event and what it is like to be the one who is changing.
Elisabeth Hanscombe, Unit for Studies in Biography and Autobiography, LaTrobe University, Melbourne, Australia
Thisbook charts the inner life of caregiver as poet. Esther provides witness and a map into Abe’s dementia. She says the diary has always been her friend. She offers us friendship and an open heart’s knowledge. Their story guides us to understand what it means to love.
It takes a courageous person to write honestly and tenderly about the Alzheimer’s journey. Esther’s poetry does just that, taking us by the hand and leading us through the joys and sorrows of living life with a progressive, fatal disease."
A portion of the proceeds from "DEAR ALZHEIMER'S" & "LISTENING TO MOZART" goes to Penny Harvest, a Solid Ground-sponsored community service organization
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PRAISEFOR LISTENING TO MOZART: POEMS OF ALZHEIMER'S (Cave Moon Press, 2014)
Following her moving memoir, Dear Alzheimer’s, about living with the gradual loss of her husband, Esther Altshul Helfgott’s Listening to Mozart is a fitting and lovely companion collection that both takes the reader through her grieving and celebrates the husband she’s lost. From the new widow’s first angry bewilderment (you must be busy/ —what are you doing/that’s so important) to her gradual coming to terms, she vividly conveys how alive the dead are after they’ve left us with their enormous absence.
-Anne Pitkin, author of Winter Arguments (Ahadada Books, 2011)
This bouquet of short poems, many in the spirit of tanka, radiates the sharp and sad fragrance of loss. Esther Altshul Helfgott's words move in their own breezy yet telling way, reminiscent of Japanese forms, yet never limiting themselves. These are poems of a deep yet passing grief.
Esther writes gracefully and honestly to her husband, Abe. The healing from this loss is ongoing and you experience her continued love, her longing, her pain, along with her acceptance of that loss. You’ll grow to love Abe too - their friendship, their marriage, their partnership - as you read the bursts of poetry, short but powerful and sharp .”
Esther Altshul Helfgott uses the melody of daily life -- waking, looking in the mirror, eating, going to the library or bookstore -- to give the reader the feeling of what it is like to keep going after her husband died of Alzheimer’s. In Listening to Mozart, using tanka (short songs)and free verse poetry, she gives the reader not just a sense of her husband, but also a sense of what it is like to miss him. This is a gift.
- David Rice, Editor Ribbons, Tanka Society of America Journal
Informed by her husband Abe’s Alzheimer’s disease, Esther’s poems share the pain and poignancy of life after his death. Listening to Mozart takes the reader on a journey of loss; tragic and beautiful, these poems like miniature portraits capturing the small moments remaining: you left / I stayed—moon /watches/ both of us— / day doesn't. Questions, understanding, and the details of how to live without another center this book—I know you / more / now you’re gone—leaving us with the remarkable realization that relationships don’t ever end, they just change form.
Each poem in Listening to Mozart reminds us that grieving is a process unfolding in the simplicity of a given moment. Esther Altshul Helfgott’s attentiveness to the details of daily life elevates these short, poignant poems to mindful meditations on memory, ritual, creativity, and healing. It is the transformative nature of art, the act of writing that can sustain us through the process: I write you / onto the page / how else / to keep you with me… Listening to Mozart is a beautifully constructed memorial reminding us that entire galaxies can be found in the face of a grandchild. Helfgott’s own insightful lines encapsulate the power of her collection: I was just writing / and love came out…
Esther shows us life is as simple as sleeping back to back and as complex as replacing tears with poems. She is our poet of memory and poet of loss of memory. When she describes seeing Abe’s handwriting and reaching for her heart we all carry that heart in our hearts.
– Gary Glazner, Founder and Executive Director, Alzheimer’s Poetry Project and author of Dementia
Arts: Celebrating Creativity in Elder Care (Health Professional Press, 2014)
