How I Find Her

Rating:
Summary: Powerful & Poetic Memoir
Review: "Poet Genie Zeiger dedicates this memoir to all visible and invisible caretakers. It is not just a memoir of her own life but all of what her life became as her mother slowly deteriorated into illness and dementia. Zeiger tenderly tenders the complex separations and intimacies between mother and daughter, and in particular between a Jewish mother and daughter. She does not avoid or romanticize the multiple realities of the situation or the intensity of emotions, but rather tells them powerfully and poetically. Her mother’s illness and death make Zeiger come full circle, as she feels almost reborn." ....

Rating:
Summary: Acceptance, Grace, and Tears for Mother
Review: "Watching my mother die," Zeiger writes in her deeply moving memoir, "was the hardest thing I've ever done." This is not as depressing as it may sound. She turns it into a journey of discovery, of family stories and recollections, told with joy and liberally salted with tears. It's a story happening to more and mo "re people these days, as life expectancies increase and adult children become caregivers for failing parents. The author, poetry editor for the Massachusetts Audubon Society's magazine Sanctuary, shares how it feels to watch her life's most important person literally lose her mind. Zeiger recounts moments of great love, of emotional connections, and many more of despair and terror as her mother, Ruth, declines into dementia. "I keep visiting my mother," she writes, "and trying not to cry in her presence." In a society that does its best to deny or ignore death, helplessness in the face of a relative's mental and then physical decline is extraordinarily difficult to accept. One of Zeiger's bulwarks against the fear - and depression, rage, frustration, anger - was her Jewish faith and its practices. She and her family used this, as others might use their own forms of religious observance, to remind themselves that there was order and purpose in a life well lived. Essentially, however, this is a story of internal change, of learning that "what requires adjustment is not my mother's condition but my understanding of it." In telling how she came to some understanding, and eventual acceptance, of her mother's life and death, Zeiger offers her readers the opportunity to examine their own attitudes. She concludes that her hope "is that I accept this inevitability - in whatever form it takes and in spite of all that will be lost - with a vast amount of grace. As my mother did." Ruth Zeiger could not ask for a better epitaph.////This review from ForeWord/The Magazine of Independent Publishing/ April 2001

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: ...Ms. Zieger's book HOW I FIND HER is a heartwarming tale depicting the relationship between a mother and a daughter. Zieger takes the reader on a heartbreaking journey as a daughter deals with the decline of her beloved mother health who has Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's-related dementia.
As a daughter, I think of my own mother's health, and thank the Lord that she has lived over fifty years illness free. As a mother, I think about my own health, and wonder if I will be that fortunate. Thoughts of our mother's dying never really enter our thoughts until we are actually faced with the dilemma, and then it saddens us when we see our once lively and independent mothers slowly fall apart.
You will laugh, as you share in her childhood memories, and you will cry hearing of her moments of mourning.
Zieger has captured the beauty of emotions and sentiment between a mother and a daughter, as well as capturing the hardships of bereavement.
Zieger's words of getting on with your life after a tremendous loss are sure to give support to those who are suffering.

Genie Zieger lives in Shelburne, Massachusetts, where she has led creative writing workshops and poetry classes for over a decade. Ms. Zieger is a former psychotherapist and crisis clinician at a mental health center; she has an M.Ed. in Counseling Education from the University of Massachusetts and an MFA in writing from Vermont College.

I highly recommend Ms. Zieger's book, HOW I FIND HER...

Rating:
Summary: Genie Zeiger's Book is truly awesome
Review: I finished reading Genie's book several days ago. It was a difficult (but necessary) book for me to read because my Mother died as a result of Alzheimer's in April of 2000. Many of the episodes that Genie spoke of in regards to her own Mom hit home with me. To say that this was a painful time for me (and for my Mother, of course) is an understatement. I strongly encourage anyone who has a loved one suffering from Alzheimer's to read this book. If you loved one has died, you will find that this book will help you thru the grieving process. Genie Zeigler should be commended for writing such a heartfelt book. Thank you, Ms. Zeigler.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful & Poetic Memoir
Review: In "How I Find Her" Poet Genie Zeiger honors her mother's life with honesty and love. In this beautifully written book she takes us from a nursing home in western MA to a Queens, N.Y. apartment to a retirement community in Florida and back to her mother's bedside and graveside. Through the eyes and thoughts of a young Genie Zeiger we see her mother lighting sabbath candles, giving advice. We identify and understand the mother/daughter stuff of love that has no bounds, that hurts and heals and nurtures and stays with us forever. A moving memoir to touch all hearts.

Rating:
Summary: A Book of Life, Love and Loss
Review: In "How I Find Her" Poet Genie Zeiger honors her mother's life with honesty and love. In this beautifully written book she takes us from a nursing home in western MA to a Queens, N.Y. apartment to a retirement community in Florida and back to her mother's bedside and graveside. Through the eyes and thoughts of a young Genie Zeiger we see her mother lighting sabbath candles, giving advice. We identify and understand the mother/daughter stuff of love that has no bounds, that hurts and heals and nurtures and stays with us forever. A moving memoir to touch all hearts.

Rating:
Summary: Sharing a necessary journey
Review: Poignant and often painfully honest, Genie Zeiger's book, How I Find Her, is a must for anyone who has experienced, or is still experiencing, the decline of a parent or other loved one through dementia. I found solace and insight in Ms. Zeiger's book in dealing with the mental slipping away of my own grandmother, who also, as the author so perceptively describes, has moments of amazing clarity and connection, even when seemingly lost to the present. The author shows incredible courage in describing her feelings, even when they are complicated mixtures of shame and love, revulsion and tenderness. She records with the honest eye of a camera, but with a poet's sensibility, lush language, and appreciation for the smallest and most moving details. I am grateful for this book, which occupies a necessary niche in writings about family wisdom and love.

Rating:
Summary: Comfort in the Written Word
Review: The author focuses on issues of role reversal, guilt, dignity and redemption in her mother's Alzheimer's disease. I found the book clear, well-written and helpful. While the family is Jewish the discussion is universal. The author never is painfully, self-pitying. Ms. Zeiger stays relevant to her subject. Not an easy subject, harder to live through than read about. For anyone who is a child of a parent with dementia or mental illness.

Rating:
Summary: a poetic guide for children of Alzheimer's victims
Review: This memoir reads like a poetic guide for any child who has suffered through the dementia of a parent. Zeiger narrates her journey through several stages of grief from the time her mother enters a nursing home to her death. Initially, she torments herself with guilt for her inability to save her mother. But eventually, she begins to reconcile the image of the sick mother with the all powerful mother she knew as a child. Zeiger documents her mother's last words, and includes journal excerpts, poetry and lyrics throughout this profound narrative.

Rating:
Summary: a poetic guide for children of Alzheimer's victims
Review: This memoir reads like a poetic guide for any child who has suffered through the dementia of a parent. Zeiger narrates her journey through several stages of grief from the time her mother enters a nursing home to her death. Initially, she torments herself with guilt for her inability to save her mother. But eventually, she begins to reconcile the image of the sick mother with the all powerful mother she knew as a child. Zeiger documents her mother's last words, and includes journal excerpts, poetry and lyrics throughout this profound narrative.