The Geography of Memory

Poets are the best at prose. In this case the poet is Jeanne Murray Walker, who wrote a memoir about her mother's years with Alzheimer's and her own memories of a Midwestern, fundamentalist Christian upbringing. I really enjoyed this book, so much that I stayed up way too late multiple nights in a row.

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She talks about metaphor. Her mother's ("Mother's") speech can be compared to the poetry of surrealists like Pablo Neruda, who "stuff their poems so full of metaphor that it's next to impossible to find a literal meaning." Accept the metaphor. Work with the metaphor.

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On deciding which items will go with Mother to the care facility: "...I'm horrified by the responsibility of making these choices."

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When she breaks free from Mother as a teen to travel to Peru: "The steep, husky, endless, snowy mountains gave me vertigo. I felt thrilled by the smallness of my own body and by the way the road ahead dwindled to a gray thread."

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Watching Mother in a hospital bed after a hip is broken: "Watching is like hearing an alarm wailing, like an arrow slowly going through my heart."

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A recounted prayer: "Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So be swift to love, make haste to be kind, live without fear. Your Creator has made you holy, has always protected you, and loves you as a mother. Go in peace and follow the good road and may the blessing of God: Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier, be with you now and always."