Sarah G

**Pre-Assignment III: 1st chapter (first 3 pages) **

As I reach for the snooze button on my alarm clock, I am all too aware of time passing. Just a few hours earlier, the night sky had been illuminated with the dancing multi-colour glows of exploding fireworks. The usual silence of midnight had been disrupted by voices around the world singing Auld Lang Syne, and people gathered to embrace their loved ones and strangers alike. The beginning of a new year is often promised to bring something bigger and better than the years that have come before, but in stark contradiction to this global tradition, I find myself with very little to celebrate.  

Walking out of the hospital last night, I knew that the moment I had been dreading and praying for was nearing. Physically and mentally exhausted, I decided I would go home and try to get some sleep. Yet, no matter how hard I tried and how much I wanted it, I just couldn’t. Tossing and turning the entire night, the constant chatter circulating in my mind kept me wide awake. It is impossible to shake the disturbing visual of the contortion that has mercilessly taken over Dad’s face and body. His face is motionless, unable to blink, unable to move. I can no longer tell if he is awake or asleep. His eyes are transfixed into a final stare, and his body, bent and stiff, has morphed into a most unnatural fetal-like position. The man I know lying in this hospital bed is no longer recognizable. And yet, despite the obvious, I sometimes need to remind myself that the man lying in front of me is indeed my dear father. Regardless of the months and months of work and study I have done to prepare myself for this moment, I find myself utterly and entirely unprepared for what is happening in real time. 

The clock shows that it is 7:15 am exactly, and I am suddenly startled by the buzzing of my silenced phone. The room is dark, and through the blinds, I can see the beautiful pinkness of the morning sky begin to emerge. Rolling myself over multiple pillows to reach for the phone on my bedside table, I immediately feel an overwhelming sense of resistance. Intuitively, I know that it's Mom calling. She’s probably been wanting to call me for hours, but hasn’t in hopes that I somehow managed to put aside my distress long enough to get some sleep. As I raise the phone to my ear, I can hear her breathe. I can tell she’s been crying for a while and that she, too, is exhausted. She hasn't left Dad’s side for the past three days. With a shaky voice and the sounds of her flowing tears echoing through the phone, I hear, “Sarah, it will happen today. It’s time to come back”. 

I throw off the covers and force myself upright, my body heavy with exhaustion and dread. Dressing quickly, I fumble with the buttons on my sweater, my fingers clumsy, my mind numb.

The drive to the hospital is a blur, the world outside the window moving too fast and too slow all at once.

As I enter the typically loud and chaotic hospital wing in which my father has spent the last eight months of his life, it is eerily silent and calm. There has only been one other day that I can remember when I have heard such silence before, and that was the day when the man across the hall passed away. I question if I am in the midst of an angelic intervention. I feel a divine calmness, and I wonder if there are angels here, surrounding us to help facilitate the passing energy of my father from this life into the next. I try to take solace in knowing that maybe, just maybe, all of our loved ones who have already crossed over throughout the years are close by, waiting to take Dad home to be with them once again. 

As I walk quietly past the nurses' station, the nurses on duty empathetically smile in the mutual acknowledgement that I am here for the final time. Approaching the closed, pea-green-coloured door to his room, I dread what I know is waiting for me on the other side. Slowly pushing it open, I see Mom quietly sitting across from the bed, looking lovingly at Dad. In her hand, she holds a hot cup of tea. We lock eyes and share a thousand unspoken words, united in sadness. Mom gets up to greet me with a hug as she tries to hold herself together. There is nothing I can say or do to console her. I turn my head to look at Dad in his bed, and it is evident that he remains precisely as he was when I left the night before. I begin to lower myself beside him and reach out to caress his clenched fist, unable to loosen his fingers so that I can hold his hand one final time. As my fingers gently sweep over his knuckles, I cannot help but wonder if he knows we are here. Even though his eyes are fixated and he can no longer speak, I wonder if he is able to see us and hear us. When I gently touch his hand, I wonder if he can feel that I am beside him.  I am mindful not to rub his hand too roughly as his frail and sensitive skin will most likely be irritated with too much friction. His feet are cold to the touch now and slowly beginning to lose their fleshy-pink colour, gradually turning into a pale shade of blue. I know we are only a few hours away from the moment when Dad will be taking his last breath. 

It has been eight months since Dad was first admitted into the hospital, even though it feels like eight years at times. For sure, there have been way more bad days than good ones since Dad got diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease six years ago. But even so, I’d give just about anything to pause the ticking clock and have one more day with him. Someone asked me recently why I torture myself by going to visit him every day when he doesn’t even know who I am anymore. I suppose it’s hard for people who haven’t gone through this journey to understand. Perhaps I do it in the hope of a very rare moment when he’ll remember that I’m his daughter. In the past four years, only two such moments have occurred. Yet, every day, I stop by to visit him and hope for a third. This disease is ruthless to those who suffer from it. Selfishly, I'm of the opinion that it’s worse for those of us caring for them. After all, Dad, for a long time now, is entirely unaware of his decline. Mom and I, on the other hand, have had to endure daily inflictions of grief and immeasurable frustrations. Often, we sacrifice our own lives to provide him with his basic necessities and struggle daily to keep him safe. And, even though these struggles for all of us are coming to an end today, I have very little confidence that the emotional load I currently carry is going to get any lighter.

Assignment #1 - Story Statement:

Alzheimer’s Unmasked is a memoir that chronicles a daughter’s journey through the slow, heartbreaking decline of her father’s mind, and the profound inner transformation it awakens in her. When her father is diagnosed, she steps into the role of caregiver, determined to preserve his dignity as Alzheimer’s strips away his memory and independence. But as the disease progresses, so too does her own unravelling. She must confront the emotional toll of grief, identity loss, and the quiet dismantling of the life she once knew. Yet, in the midst of sorrow, she uncovers unexpected moments of tenderness, laughter, and connection. Through the quiet power of presence and the courage to let go, she finds that love, when fully honoured, becomes not only a path through loss, but an opening into healing, meaning, and wholeness. What begins as a story of decline becomes an invitation to transformation. It becomes a testament to how meaning can emerge from even our darkest hours, and how caregiving, at its most honest, can shape us into someone braver, wiser, and more alive than we ever imagined.

 

Assignment #2 - Antagonistic Force:

The primary antagonistic force in Alzheimer’s Unmasked is Alzheimer’s disease itself, a relentless, progressive condition that slowly dismantles the narrator’s father’s memory, identity, and autonomy. It creates many challenges that shape the story throughout the timeline of this progressive disease. However, in keeping with the assignment’s request to identify a person specifically, the narrator’s mother functions as a secondary, situational antagonist.

Throughout the story, sometimes obviously and sometimes quietly, the mother’s goal is to care for her husband on her terms. She often reacts to her husband's Alzheimer’s decline by staying in motion, managing details, and avoiding deeper emotional reflection. While devoted and well-intentioned, her differing caregiving style occasionally clashes with the narrator’s more sensitive and emotionally attuned approach.

These moments of conflict are not necessarily central battles in the story, but serve as emotional crossroads and pivotal moments for the narrator. In a story where emotions run high and roles shift quickly, even subtle resistance sometimes significantly impacts the narrator’s journey. The mother, as the antagonist, serves less as a barrier and more as a mirror, highlighting the personal choices the narrator must make as she seeks healing, meaning, and peace in the face of slow and inevitable loss. 

 

Assignment #3 - Breakout Title:

1.     Alzheimer’s Unmasked: A daughter's story of love, loss and liberation

2.     What Remains: Alzheimer's changed my father - Remembering changed me

3.     The Space Between Us: Alzheimer's changed everything - So did I

 

Assignment #4 - Comparables:

1.     Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Written from the patient's point of view, this book offers an intimate and heartbreaking view into the internal world of cognitive decline, capturing the fear, disorientation, and gradual loss of identity caused by the disease. It is praised for its emotional depth and for helping readers and audiences understand Alzheimer’s through a clinically informed yet easily understood narrative.

While Still Alice portrays the experience of living with the disease, my memoir, Alzheimer’s Unmasked, approaches the subject from the opposite side, through the eyes of a caregiver. It is told from the perspective of a daughter watching the slow disappearance of her father, as she navigates the daily heartbreak and complexities of caring for someone with this disease.

While Genova’s novel helps people understand what is going on in the mind of someone with the disease, my memoir explores the emotional, physical, and internal transformations of those left to care for the fading person.

Alzheimer’s Unmasked offers a complementary narrative to Still Alice, expanding the conversation Genova started by showing how the disease reshapes not only the patient but also the lives and identities of those who care for them. It is a profoundly human story of devotion, surrender, and discovering purpose in the midst of grief and loss.

 2.     Slow Dancing with a Stranger by Meryl Comer

Told from Meryl Comer’s dual perspective as a wife and daughter of someone who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, this memoir blends personal storytelling and criticism of the health care system for failing her family. Her goal with this book was to share the emotional toll of caring for her husband and mother, who both suffered from this disease, but also to advocate for systemic change. She writes in a direct, no-nonsense way, with a strong sense of urgency that demonstrates how intense and overwhelming the experience of long-term caregiving was for her and her family.

In contrast, Alzheimer's Unmasked offers a more gentle, introspective, and emotionally intimate portrayal of caregiving, told exclusively from a daughter's perspective. While Slow Dancing with a Stranger centres around activism and systemic failure, Alzheimer’s Unmasked focuses on the internal journey of the caregiver and what caregiving teaches us about grief, surrender, and the quiet strength of the human spirit. Where Comer’s memoir pushes outward to demand change, my memoir turns inward to explore meaning.

 

Assignment #5 – Logline:

When her father is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, a devoted daughter steps into the role of caregiver, only to find her own life slowly unravelling alongside his. As his memory fades, she’s forced to confront everything she thought she understood about love, loss, and what it means to truly live.

Assignment #6

At the heart of Alzheimer’s Unmasked is the protagonist’s inner conflict between devotion and depletion, control and surrender, and the quiet fear that in caring for her father, she might lose herself in the process.

She longs to show up lovingly, patiently, and competently as her father fades into Alzheimer’s. But the emotional toll of watching him disappear, the constant role reversal, and the mounting responsibilities of caregiving stir an ongoing internal struggle. She feels guilty for needing space to tend to her own life, ashamed of her moments of irritation or emotional exhaustion with him, and caught between what she’s doing and what she believes she should be doing.

Her turmoil is magnified by the pressure of being everything for everyone: her father, daughter, and mother. She silently questions how long she can keep going without losing her sense of self. Beneath her steady caregiving exterior, she quietly unravels, trying to hold on to her identity, self-worth, and the belief that love will be enough, even when nothing else in her life seems certain.

 

Part 6B:

Mom’s eyes fill with tears. “Sarah, your dad has stage one lung cancer,” she says softly. I sit down, stunned. We had already agreed on compassionate care, no resuscitative measures, no invasive interventions. Just comfort care when the time came.

She continues, explaining the doctor’s recommendations, “They’re unsure about surgery due to your Dad’s Alzheimer’s, but they’ve mentioned radiation as an option”.

Then, standing at the foot of the bed, she looks at me and asks, “What do you think we should do?”

I freeze. Hadn’t we already made this decision months ago? Hadn’t we already agreed that when Dad’s body started to fail, we’d only agree to compassionate care and not choose to extend his suffering?

Now I’m questioning everything I thought had already been decided. Is it selfish of me to want to end his suffering sooner rather than later? Is it inhumanely cruel of me to want what ultimately equates to a death sentence?

Trigger:

When my mom suddenly reconsiders our mutual agreement of compassionate care, the first moment we're faced with the dilemma of having to choose between prolonging Dad’s suffering or letting him go peacefully.

Reaction:

The daughter is emotionally blindsided, conflicted, and internally torn. She feels betrayed by her mom, angry at this sudden shift in their existing agreement of what would be best for her father once his body begins to fail. She is now flooded with guilt, doubt, and shame. The unity she thought they had in this decision dissolves, leaving her to question her moral compass and emotional strength once again.

Social Environment Situation:

The protagonist’s emotional struggle within the family social environment, specifically her conflict with her mother over decision-making, power dynamics, and feeling disregarded and minimized in her caregiving role.

 

Assignment #7 -The Importance of Setting:

Primary setting: The hospital where Dad lived for the last eight months.

The hospital wasn’t cold in the way hospitals are often described, but it wasn’t warm either. Unit 52, where Dad lived, was built for holding people, not healing them. The walls were painted a dreary shade of beige, the lighting fluorescent and flat, and the hallways always smelled faintly of soiled diapers and discarded food. There were signs taped to every door, reminders for staff about the risks the patient who lived in the corresponding room was in danger of, such as fall risk, not resuscitating, pureed diet only, etc. Life was reduced to checklists here.

Dad’s room sat at the end of a long corridor, just past the nurses' station where alarms beeped constantly and nurses whispered confidential conversations. The window in his room faced the busy street below, where cars came and went, unaware of the slow unravelling of our lives just a few storeys above them.

It was a waiting room of sorts. A place where time moved differently as we waited for him to decline so significantly that he would eventually surrender to his disease, and die.

Second Primary setting: Home

The house was nothing extraordinary, just a typical family home filled with the rhythms of everyday life, until everything began to shift. It was where Dad started forgetting things, where conversations began to loop, and simple routines slowly became complicated. Subtle changes in the house mirrored the changes in him.

As Dad’s needs grew, the home environment evolved; furniture was moved, door locks were changed, and routines were rewritten. It was where we tried to keep things as normal as possible, even as nothing felt normal anymore. The house held love, but also tension. It offered comfort, but we were never at rest. Over time, it became less a place to enjoy our lives and more a place to manage them. And yet, despite the unwanted changes it endured, it remained the heart of our effort to make Dad feel safe.

Third setting: Dad’s Final Room

This room is a sacred space. It is quieter than the others, darker, and dense with the weight of anticipation. The air feels thick within these walls, as if the space here is holding its breath with us. This setting is where the story ends, and where another begins.