Good Morning Alz Heimer

Even among the enlightened who are involved in supporting a person through the twilight of consciousness and life, Good Morning, Alzheimer’s occupies an exceptional position. Amnon Shamosh supports his wife during her unfortunate journey into forgetfulness, starting on the day she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. However, Shamosh’s book is no lament. In it, forgetfulness is not a negative, lacking presence. Instead, Shamosh grants forgetfulness a place, treating it as a continent to be mapped in minute detail. He finds in it intimacy and warmth, as well as new possibilities for presence and love.

He humanizes the disease, giving it an image, character, and name. He invites Mr. Alz Heimer to sit at the table with him and his life partner, forming a threesome. Instead of wrestling with the disease, Shamosh speaks with it, challenges it, and negotiates with it, incorporating it into daily life. Day by day, page by page, Shamosh’s diary of this devastating illness is transformed into a powerful record of a new incarnation of love, and of life’s paradoxical ability to distill itself to the essence, precisely at the point where it recedes.