Nothing prepared Catherine J. Borrie for living with her mother and attending to her mother's onset of Alzheimer's disease, even though Borrie had trained as a nurse in Vancouver and holds a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University. Borrie is a highly capable person, someone who also graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a degree in law and has a Certificate in Creative Writing from the SFU Writer's Studio. She eventually realized the best way to cope and to care was not to lead, but to follow. As she learned to accept the radical changes in her mother Jo's personality and behavior, and even savour the intimacy that their shared journey afforded, Borrie began tape recording their conversations. She has incorporated some of their "wondrously poetic" dialogues for The Long Hello (Simon & Schuster 2015), an encouraging memoir about dementia that will also serve as the basis for a stage play that Borrie is developing in conjunction with playwright James Fagan Tait. Catherine Joan Borrie previously published The Long Hello: The Other Side of Alzheimer's (Nightwing Press 2010).

BOOKS:

The Long Hello: The Other Side of Alzheimer's (Nightwing Press 2010).

The Long Hello: Memory, My Mother and Me (Simon & Schuster 2015) 9781476792514 $29.99

[BCBW 2015]

[Kimberly Mara Eclipse Photography]