The Story of Forgetting

This passage was taken from The Story of Forgetting: A Novel by Stefan Merrill Block.  It is a wonderfully written, sensitive, joyful yet heavy story about: 1) A teenager whose mother has early onset Alzheimer's, 2) An old man who wishes he could forget, and 3) A land called Isidora where memories do not exist for anyone.

Hopefully this blog will be the most difficult one you will see here, but it makes one really realize that to live to today is a must, to be grateful for what one has is a must, to be compassionate and supportive is a must, to love fully is a must … for who knows when tomorrow will arrive.

Page 182

… when the disease commenced its final, irrevocable, backward march, death finally coming for all that life first brings:

The death of speaking.
The death of walking.
The death of control over the bowels.
The death of standing upright.
The death of self-feeding.
The death of crawling.
The death of sitting up.
The death of sleeping at night.
The death of swallowing.

When the final death came, that of the beating of her heart, so much of her had died so long before that this death was no more than another, was simply the last.

But at the end, modest solace: after countless deaths, after a full reversal of a life, what was left of Mama finally came to rest in the fragile circle of an unborn baby, her emaciated knees drawn snugly to the chest. The only word for her then was not dead but returned.