In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss

Reads as very honest account of the journey and reasons taken. Raw and really made me think. Is there a family not marked by dementia these days...

This is a great, succinct, mini-memoir. It is sad (I cried almost every chapter) but it's also a testament to things you may be called to do if you love someone. I highly recommend. Bring tissue

This book is about love and illness, and the difficult choices some are forced to make in order to give their loved one dignity when facing illness and ultimately death. It is the authors personal journey when her husband is diagnosed with Alzheimers and he makes the decision for assisted suicide in Zurich, Switzerland. Having witnessed loved ones who suffered with dementia in the last years of their lives, I understand the choice that was made. While she did mention the healthcare money machine that makes billions off memory care and nursing homes, I wish she had provided a bit more. But it is illuminating that for most Americans they do not have the choice to detour from years of illness and misery. To say nothing of the collateral damage to families that is usually accompanied by a diagnosis of Alzheimer's or dementia. A brave book.

All of us will die, but we don't talk about it. I'm filled with gratitude to Amy Bloom for writing about this in a way that removes the taboo. We want to die in our sleep but almost none of us does. We die connected to tubes, or weak from stopping eating and drinking, or in palliative sedation when breakthrough pain becomes too much. I'm fortunate to live in Vermont where, provided we have the prognosis of a terminal illness, medical aid in dying (MAID) allows us to choose the day. It is a peaceful and serene process, with sleep often occurring in under an hour. This was Amy Bloom's husband's experience in Switzerland. One can only pray that every state in America, not just the ten that have done so so far, will pass a medical aid in dying law that allows us to die in peace without having to fly to Switzerland at a cost of $10,000.

The title to this book is very misleading. It really, REALLY should not be a recommended resource in your Amazon feed when looking for books on the topic of Alzheimer’s (as it was for me). This book should be in the category of books about assisted suicide and not about Alzheimer’s. It was much more about suicide and choosing your own death than anything else. Halfway through the book I had to turn back to the title because I couldn’t believe how how little the content connected with the cover. I definitely didn’t get an impression of a great love and loss. It is obsessively about trying to help someone die rather than go though the pain of Alzheimer’s. If anything, this book is about avoiding Alzheimer’s, not going through it. It’s about needing to control what can’t be controlled and lots of discussion on ways to kill or be killed. It’s quite morbid and feels like an avoidance of what’s actually going on. It feels so desperate. It’s a dark book. I’d say it’s probably triggering. So much was obsessing about how to kill Brian or help him kill himself. So little about who he was, about life. I do understand not wanting to go through the pain and suffering of Alzheimer’s. My grandmother had active Alzheimer’s for at least 15 years. And yes, it’s painful and hard and something we should all try to think about in advance. I made myself finish this book( having started under a totally different pretense) because I felt that I should give a chance to this total opposite view of life/death, but I did not come away feeling I had gained anything. Would not recommend. I can say the reading was easy, I read it in probably 3 hours give or take. I’d have read a totally different book by this author, a clinical one but not one based on relationships. I’m really surprised she has so many books with love in the title as there was nothing in this book that led me to think she had a good way of discussing love.