Finding Meaning in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Memory Loss
It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day challenges of caregiving and lose sight of the important things in life. This is true for just about anyone, anytime, but particularly true when working through the challenges of a progressive disease like Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s.
Much is said about caregivers and their need for respite time away. But what if you could make your time as a caregiver more rewarding, more fulfilling…something that you looked forward to.
No one is saying that caregiving will ever be easy, but being able to look beyond the difficulties and seeing the beauty in people despite what afflicts them is exactly what Phillip Toledano and Judith Fox have done.
Phillip Toledano’s Days with My Father is an amazing site that received a lot of recognition earlier this year and will be a book by the same name that will be out June of 2010. It’s hard to look at the site and not be moved. Toledano is clearly a talented photographer and has two other gorgeous photo books in print: Phonesex and Bankrupt which remarkably wasn’t done recently, but in 2004.
I heard Judith Fox interviewed on Fresh Air the other day and was taken by her energy and compassion. Judith married her husband just three years before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. 
As Fresh Air puts it, “In an attempt to remove the sense of isolation that so many feel, Fox attempted to capture images of the soul of the man she still loves.” Ultimately she was encouraged to publish a book with her photographs. There’s a five-minute video that talks about the thinking that went into the photos and the book called, I Still Do: Loving and Living With Alzheimer’s.
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Thank you very much for speaking so kindly of my interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air” and my book “I Still Do: Loving and Living with Alzheimer’s”. I want to mention that my book was published by powerHouse Books, not by me. PowerHouse is a leading publisher of photography and art books, and “I Still Do” is available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and at leading booksellers around the county. For more information, please go to: http://www.powerhousebooks.com/book/1095 and please visit my blog at http://www.judithfox.com
Sandra Day O’Connor says of “I Still Do”: “This is a lovely book about a devastating problem — Alzheimer’s. The pages are like poetry and the photos say more than words. Anyone who has cared for a loved one with Alzheimer’s will relate to and appreciate every one of these pages.”
Sandra Day O’Connor