Review of The Long Hello: Memory, My Mother and Me by Cathie Borrie

The Long Hello: Memory, My Mother and Me

I have a particular affinity, it seems, for books that deal with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, such as Sarah Leavitt’s graphic memoir Tangles: a story about alzheimer’s, my mother, and me and Emma Healey’s wonderful novel Elizabeth is Missing.

Cathie Borrie’s poetic memoir, The Long Hello: Memory, My Mother and Me fits nicely into that category and adds another layer of insight and empathy to the Alzheimer’s experience, and the experience of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s.

Told in a series of lyrical snapshots, Borrie relates her experience of caring for her mother during her mother’s seven-year decline, while interweaving flashbacks of her own childhood and history with her mother. She is also able to convey her own struggle to be a person herself, to have a life of her own, while devoting so much time to providing care to her mother. It makes for a beautifully written, unconventional approach to memoir. Struck by her mother’s new odd way of speaking, Borrie starts to record their conversations. (“I want to keep the words of my new poet-mother.”) Several of these seemingly nonsensical conversations are, apparently, transcribed into the book as they happened. I suspect that these conversations may be divisive for readers: some will understand Borrie’s desire to interact fully with her mother on her mother’s own terms (rather than redirect her to speaking about the here and now), while others will be put off by Borrie’s questions (“‘What’s the worst thing a person could do to another person?’ ‘They could throw their sublime into the ridiculous.'”) and comforting lies (that her dead parents will be there to see her soon). But Borrie lies all of this bare in the book, as a good memoirist does, not justifying, but portraying honestly and poignantly her experience.

Those looking for a straightforward account, a straightforward narrative, of caring for a parent with dementia might want to look elsewhere, so this isn’t a book for everyone. But those seeking an artistic response, a creative nonfiction text that captures heartbreak and pain and moments of beauty in small snippets of poetic writing, will find this a moving book. It reminded me a little bit of Helen Humphreys’s Nocturne.

Reviewed by Kelsey Attard

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