Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me

Heartbreaking. Heartwarming. Sad. Uplifting. Poignant. The film Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me was all of those. Just after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, Campbell embarks on a farewell tour of over 100 concerts. He may stumble cognitively at home, but when he walks on stage, Campbell is transformed, his brain seems to click into place, and the music comes flowing back. He may need a teleprompter to remember the lyrics of songs he must have sung hundreds of time, yet the melodies are pitch-perfect and his fingers fly confidently over the strings as he and his daughter Ashley launch into duelling banjos (video here). Campbell can't remember what happened a few minutes ago, yet remembers the melody of the last song he wrote and manages to lay down a haunting rendition of his last single I'm Not Gonna Miss You, with its heartfelt and sadly true lyrics.

I'm still here, but yet I'm gone
I don't play guitar or sing my songs
They never defined who I am
The man that loves you 'til the end

You're the last person I will love
You're the last face I will recall
And best of all, I'm not gonna miss you
Not gonna miss you

I'm never gonna hold you like I did
Or say I love you to the kids
You're never gonna see it in my eyes
It's not gonna hurt me when you cry

I'm never gonna know what you go through
All the things I say or do
All the hurt and all the pain
One thing selfishly remains

I'm not gonna miss you
I'm not gonna miss you

This lovely movie, a touching video highlights reel of two years during Campbell's final tour, dramatizes the invidious onslaught of Alzheimer's and its impact on Campbell and his family. It's intended to dramatize and advocate for the Alzheimer community. It succeeds.

P.S. I have another post with a review of the book Still Alice, also about Alzheimer's.

Still Alice

Still Alice, by Lisa Genova, is a terrifying and touching book describing the onslaught of early-onset Alzheimer's. 

Alice Howland is a brilliant Harvard psychology professor, successful in her career, with a beloved and supportive husband, three children, a wonderful summer home - in short, a perfect life.   She manages a hectic and demanding schedule of teaching and international public speaking, and the day-to-day tasks like finding the car keys for her absent-minded husband.  But disconcerting things are happening.  She loses her train of thought in a speech she's given countless times before.  She can't figure out what something on her to-do list means.  She gets disoriented walking her familiar path from the university to her house.  She finds reasons for these lapses.  It's mere forgetfulness.  It's overwork.  It's stress.  It's menopause.  However, her doctor doesn't think so and sends her for assessment: suddenly she's confronted with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's. 

The disease takes hold more quickly in those who succumb to it before 65 and Still Alice is absolutely terrifying as it describes the swift and brutal deterioration of an extremely talented and intellectually gifted woman.  Alice is smart, and devises all sorts of aids to continuing her life.  She even devises a memory test meant to signal when the situation has deteriorated so badly she should take her own life with the pills she's been hoarding.  We see different members of her family and her university colleagues struggle to find the best response; they range from denial, impatience, solicitude, avoidance, compassion, and constructive assistance.  

The author of Still Alice is Lisa Genova, who holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard.  Because publishers thought this book would only appeal to the Alzheimer's community, Genova self-published and self-marketed.  It's hard to believe publishers couldn't see that for many boomers, Alzheimer's is a fear greater than death, and this book would be greeted with great interest, as well as huge trepidation.  The popularity of the book spread through word of mouth and an agent and a publisher appeared.  In the end, the book was Top 10 on New York Times and Globe and Mail best-seller list.  It's a gripping read, and no wonder it found an audience.

Genova's next book, Left Neglected, is the story of another highly successful, multitasking Harvard Ph.D. (notice a pattern here?) who loses the left side of her brain in a traumatic traffic accident.  I remember Jill Bolte-Taylor's riveting talk at TED where she described what it felt like to have a stroke that damaged the left side of her brain and the euphoria she felt as her analytic left side quit working.

Turn of Mind

A good mystery unfolds in bits and pieces, tantalizing the reader with ambiguous clues and tangential meanderings.  The devious author sets out to confuse the reader and to obfuscate the ultimate destination.

This is exactly what the devilish disease Alzheimer's does to its victims.  It makes a mockery of their mind, offering only disconnected and sporadic memories.  It can leave them standing on a familiar street unsure of the way home to their own house.  What a clever device to write a mystery in the voice of someone suffering from dementia, using her aide-memoire journals as the text of the novel.  This is exactly what Alice LaPlante has done in Turn of Mind.  Jennifer White was a skilled orthopedic surgeon before Alzheimer's forced her to retire. Now her best friend Amanda is dead, her fingers cut off with surgical  precision, and Jennifer is the prime suspect.  She herself can't recall if she murdered her friend or not.  The novel lurches forward in fits and starts, taking the reader along on the patchy path of White's brain.  White is lost in the present, but relevant memories sporadically surface to fill in the back story.  It was a fascinating read, although I found the abrupt ending a bit unsatisfying.  (That's the second time in as many books where I've complained about the ending!)

Alice LaPlante teaches creative writing at Stanford, and Turn of Mind is her impressive first novel.  I would  recommend it.