ALZHEIMER'S CANYON

A joint memoir explores the lives of two people, in a relationship over four decades, before and after one of them was diagnosed with dementia.

Yardley and Dwinell’s love story began in 1984, when they met in the summer; she’d recently opened a vegetarian restaurant in Vermont, and he was a produce delivery person.This set them on a decadeslong path of building a life together as a married couple and raising two children. They lived in Vermont, France, Louisiana, and a few other places along the way and explored their passions for house building and boating; they lived busy, full lives, which began to be affected by Yardley’s memory-loss issues as early as 2012. In 2016, Yardley received a diagnosis that he was experiencing the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, thus beginning the couple’s journey into what they characterized as the “Alzheimer’s canyon.” Much of the memoir is built from memoiristic blog posts that Yardley, who died in 2021, and Dwinell wrote in 2017, with Dwinell writing introductions and categorizing them into chronological chapters. What results is an engaging and incredibly insightful dynamic that reflects Yardley’s desire to share his experiences in order to help others and Dwinell’s, and their children’s, drive to support Yardley as best they could. The family’s story is told with positivity and sensitive realism, discussing such things as legal issues, including what documents “will bring peace of mind and make things easier on everyone,” and the effectiveness of particular medications; the work also encourages readers affected by dementia to tick off all the items on their bucket lists. Both Yardley’s and Dwinell’s narrative voices convey their deep love for each other, and throughout, they offer compassion and a respectful awareness of the unique nature of every person’s experience with similar issues.

An important and practical read for people living with Alzheimer’s disease and similar illnesses.