This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of The Living End A Family Story for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.
A Grandson and Grandmother together in The Living End, A Memoir of Forgiving and Forgetting
On The Good Men Project, we talk a lot about the relationships men have with women. But almost zero of those stories are about the relationship men have with their grandmothers. Why is that, we wonder? And after reading Robert Leleux’s delightful new book, The Living End, A Memoir of Forgiving and Forgetting you’ll wonder why we don’t run more of those stories.
The unusual grandson-grandmother relationship is made even more unusual by the fact that this book is a funny book about Alzheimer’s. Robert’s grandmother, JoAnn, believes that “The only thing to fear is the thing you can’t make funny.” At last. A way to talk about Alzheimer’s without fear. A way to talk about Alzheimer’s with hope.
Alzheimer’s is almost always thought of a disease without hope. How on earth could a story about Alzheimer’s be hopeful? For that, you only have to listen to the author’s grandmother yourself: “The wonderful thing about Alzheimer’s,” she would say, unfurling her arm like Bette Davis, “is that you always live in the moment.”
The Living End, A Memoir of Forgiving and Forgetting was based on a New York Times Article in the popular Modern Love column. After the article ran, Robert started receiving more emails than he ever could have imagined. “It was beyond my wildest expectations,” said Leleux, “and extremely humbling that my family’s story could affect anyone in that way. The emails just kept coming and coming. And before long, I knew what I had to do.” In January of 2012, The Living End was published by St. Martin’s Press. Like most of the best stories we publish here on Good Men Project, it is based on an idea – the idea that Alzheimer’s could, in fact, have an upside, and that both the author and his grandmother were able to see that upside together.
For my grandfather and me, having to witness JoAnn’s Alzheimer’s had been agonizing — like watching “The Miracle Worker” backward. Every day seemed accompanied by a new limitation. But for my grandmother, the disease had seemed liberating. For the first time in all the years I’d known her, she seemed truly happy.
Imagine: to be freed from your memory, to have every awful thing that ever happened to you wiped away — and not just your past, but your worries about the future, too. Because with no sense of time or memory, past and future cease to exist, along with all sense of loss and regret. Not to mention grudges and hurt feelings, arguments and embarrassments.
And that’s the fantasy, isn’t it? To have your record cleared. To be able not to merely forget, but to expunge your unhappy childhood, or unrequited love, or rocky marriage from your memory. To start over again.
To read more about a grandson's journey through Alzheimer's with his grandmother in The Living End, A Memoir of Forgiving and Forgetting Buy it Now. You can also Read More About the Author, here.
And finally, Have an Alzheimer's Story to Share?