Louis Post-Dispatch,
From April 6, 2003 Sunday Five Star Lift Edition
By Lee Ann Sandweiss

A PARENT'S DESCENT INTO DEMENTIA BRINGS CLARITY TO THE CAREGIVING CHILD.

Scheduled for publication within a month of each other, "Death in Slow Motion" by Eleanor Cooney and "The Story of My Father" by Sue Miller have a lot in common. Both are memoirs, written by novelists, about caring for a parent with Alzheimer's disease. Yet, despite the similarities, both books have radically different perspectives and intentions.

Cooney's mother, the 1960s novelist Mary Durant, suffered from severe depression after the sudden death of her third husband and soul mate, Mike Harwood, a writer and environmentalist. Durant's depression never lifted, and Cooney believes that it prodded the onset of Alzheimer's. In her prime, Durant was a witty, martini-swilling party girl who cavorted with the likes of John Huston, Arthur Miller and Alexander Calder.

As a mother to Cooney and her brother, Durant left a lot to be desired. One practical joke on her first husband, the children's father, was to dump the kids with him and his new wife while she trotted off to Europe for the winter with her ne'er-do-well second husband.

Cooney's experience of caring for her mother nearly costs her own mental health. A lack of financial resources put the lion's share of the caregiving directly on Cooney and her steadfast partner, Mitch. To care for Durant, the couple moves her from her beloved home in Connecticut to northern California. After discovering that she is incapable of living on her own in a small nearby apartment, they construct quarters for her in their home. Cooney candidly admits that she began to rely on Valium and alcohol to cope with the strain of caring for her mother on a daily basis.

Her livelihood is also at stake, given that she also finds it impossible to get any writing done while trying to meet the demands of an impossibly stubborn and increasingly disoriented woman.

When Cooney finally concludes that she must institutionalize her mother to save her own life and her relationship, she must grapple with not only profound guilt but also the Byzantine terms of Durant's insurance policy to try to determine if it would cover the costs of long-term care at a decent facility a reasonable distance from her home. Cooney soon finds herself driving hundreds of miles and visiting dozens of nursing homes, some so depressing from a curb view that she refuses to leave her car: "I can see everything I need to see through the windshield: a jerry-built collection of wooden buildings and trailers, it sits about ten feet from a busy road where huge diesel logging trucks roar by at sixty miles an hour. The old folks sit in a big picture window facing the road, right there in full view in their Barca-Loungers and wheelchairs like mannequins in a store window. Dismal with a capital 'D.'" Frustration mounts when Cooney finally finds an acceptable nursing home, not too far away, that accepts her mother's insurance, but Durant turns out to be too high maintenance for the staff, and Cooney is forced to begin the search anew.

Cooney weaves her own memories from childhood with details of Durant's amazing life and tragic descent into dementia in a narrative that crackles with grim humor and pragmatism. Although it is a heart-wrenching read, "Death in Slow Motion" is an important, well-told story that, alas, is not fiction but the terrifyingly real chronicle of the disintegration of a brilliant personality.

"Death in Slow Motion: My Mother's Descent into Alzheimer's"
By Eleanor Cooney
Published by HarperCollins, 250 pages,
$23.95

From (4/6/03) St. Louis Post-Dispatch