Life Is a Gift or Losing My Mind

Life Is a Gift: Inspiration from the Soon Departed

Author: Bob Fisher

In candid interviews, terminal patients in the Alive Hospice program talked with authors Bob and Judy Fisher, addressing some of the most important questions we ask about our life and how we've made the journey. These end-of-life ponderings are collected into inspirational and provoking thoughts that will encourage each of us to live life fully. Each story is reflected in thematic chapters-priorities, family, simple pleasures, romance, integrity, regret, forgiveness-crafted into a series of "lessons learned," offering motivation to approach life with more vigor. These powerful stories deliver the clear message that if you wait to really live until you know you are going to die, you risk missing much of the joy life has to offer and the chance to leave a positive legacy.

Publishers Weekly

What can the dying teach the living? That is the question that educators Bob and Judy Fisher set out to answer when they interviewed 104 hospice patients ages five to 98. There are no surprises in this slim volume: people talk about family more than work, and about living in the present. The book is organized thematically around topics like priorities, simple pleasures, regrets and forgiveness. This leads to some repetition and overlap, but also helps each chapter stand alone for individual study. The tone is comfortably conversational and liberally peppered with tie-ins to popular songs, although sometimes the authors' commentary gets in the way of their subjects' more powerful words. This is not a soul-shaking book, but it is an effective invitation to self-reflection. It stands out among the growing number of books about death and dying in that it is aimed back at the living: readers can find inspiration in these voices to make better choices in the here and now, find deeper joy in every day and live life with no regrets. (May)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Interesting textbook: Dare To Be 100 or Superfoods for Healthy Kids

Losing My Mind

Author: Thomas DeBaggio

When Tom DeBaggio turned fifty-seven in 1999, he thought he was embarking on the golden years of retirement -- time to spend with his family, his friends, and the herb garden he spent decades cultivating.

One winter day, he told his doctor during a routine exam that he had been stumbling into forgetfulness. After it subsequent battery of tests, DeBaggio joined the legion of twelve million others afflicted with Alzheimer's disease.

Losing My Mind is an extraordinary first-person account that charts the ups and downs of early onset Alzheimer's -- a form of the disease which can he particularly ravaging to younger, more alert minds. DeBaggio started writing on the first day of his diagnosis and has continued despite his slipping grasp on his memory.

DeBaggio paints a vivid picture of the splendor of memory and the pain that comes from its loss. DeBaggio poignantly depicts one of the most important parts of our lives -- remembrance -- and how we tend to overlook it. But to DeBaggio, memory is more than just an account of a time long past, it is one's ability to function, to think and ultimately, to survive. As his life is reduced to moments of clarity, the true power of thought and his ability to connect to the world shines through.

A testament to the beauty of memory, Losing My Mind is more than just an account of Alzheimer's, it is the captivating story of one man's battle to stay connected with the world.

Book Magazine

Hideous irony, that a memoir about memory loss could be so unforgettable. At fifty-seven, DeBaggio, a commercial gardener who has written books on the subject, finds himself in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. Writing from the afflicted point of view was a difficult undertaking. "After 40 years of pussyfooting with words," he says, "I finally had a story of hell to tell." The author puts on a brave face but thankfully doesn't try to maintain it throughout. The book's unconventional narrative combines childhood memories with excerpts from medical reports; its choppy style is a necessary consequence of DeBaggio's diminishing condition. Oddly, the approach helps him explain the disease that is fast becoming unexplainable for him. DeBaggio frets that he lived "an ordinary life by definition"—only to conclude that the hand he's been dealt is anything but ordinary. This amazing book is both a lament and a muted kind of celebration. "It is the most exciting time in my life," DeBaggio acknowledges. "As it should be."
—James Sullivan

Publishers Weekly

"I have a clear sense of history, I just don't know whether it is mine," writes DeBaggio in this moving and unusual memoir. The author, who has previously written about his gardening business (Growing Herbs from Seed, Cutting and Root), documents his mental deterioration from Alzheimer's. Diagnosed with the disease in 1999 at the age of 57, DeBaggio undertook this project in order to increase awareness of this devastating illness from a patient's point of view. He describes how his gradual loss of memory has impacted his life. For example, after he became confused about how to get to his niece's house, he realized he had to give up driving a car. The increased loss of language has been extremely difficult for a man who once worked as a journalist and a freelance writer. Interspersed throughout the narrative are DeBaggio's recollections of his childhood events that may soon be lost to him. He also describes the disease's negative effect on his wife and grown son. Although DeBaggio provides information on the medical advances that are being made to treat this disease, it is clear that a breakthrough will come too late for him. With this rare first-person account, DeBaggio has made a significant contribution to literature on an illness that currently affects four million Americans. (Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In 1999, when he was 57 years old, DeBaggio was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Shortly thereafter, he began this moving memoir. A former journalist, professional gardener, and author of two gardening books, DeBaggio was determined to record the course of his illness "to break through the sense of shame and silence [that] Alzheimer's has engendered and to tell the world what it is like." He recounts stories from his past, daily life since his diagnosis, and its effect on his wife and son, along with summaries of scientific information about Alzheimer's gleaned from the professional literature. Interspersed with that information are his almost epigrammatic musings on the loneliness, fear, anger, and even puzzlement engendered by this "evil disease that sleeps on the edge of [his] consciousness." DeBaggio soon discovered that Alzheimer's freed him to "write seriously and well." Truly, the act of remembering and writing gave purpose to his days when he could no longer work in his greenhouses. However, finding the words to express himself eventually became "insurmountable," and his ability to perform everyday tasks gradually diminished; he found himself struggling to finish the book before "there [was] no memory left." DeBaggio's vivid descriptions of changes in memory and thought patterns, as well as his nocturnal visual hallucinations, illuminate this harrowing disease as few other first-person accounts have. Highly recommended. [Thanks to medications, the author is doing fairly well. Ed.] Karen McNally Bensing, Benjamin Rose Inst. Lib., Cleveland Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.