cover image THE GLORY WALK: A Memoir

THE GLORY WALK: A Memoir

Cathryn E. Smith, . . VanderWyk & Burnham, $22.95 (195pp) ISBN 978-1-889242-17-0

This memoir of a father's struggle with Alzheimer's wavers from luminous to baffling. Its structure is nonlinear, punctuating straightforward memories of Smith's father's illness with dream sequences, conversations written in play form, poetry and excerpts from scholarly journals. This approach makes for a fragmented narrative, but determined readers should persevere for Smith's straightforward sections, which trace the disease's course with precision and grace. Her sentiments are sure to echo the experience of anyone who has lost a loved one to Alzheimer's. For instance, she imagines telling the well-intentioned but not terribly sensitive nurse at her father's nursing home, "I'll just wait down here while you wave some magic wand or clunk him on the head if you have to, just get him out of those diapers and into a nice Sunday suit and we'll go to... lunch, have a whiskey sour and rum punch, eat all the cashews out of the nut mix, take two popovers instead of one, play with the electric windows in the Buick." Smith's gift for communicating her wish to be anywhere but her present situation is especially apparent as she writes about the undignified death of her formerly affable and easygoing father. She describes her last memory of him, waving good-bye from a chair, and writes, "If I tip [the memory] a bit, as if holding a small mirror in the light, maybe then I can see that it isn't really my father at all but a little boy playing spaceman.... He is waving to the cheering crowd as he prepares to blast off." Such descriptions make this overly ambitious book worthwhile. (May 31)