On Vanishing: Mortality, Dementia, and What It Means to Disappear

Product Description
An essential book for those coping with Alzheimer's and other cognitive disorders that "reframe[s] our understanding of dementia with sensitivity and accuracy . . . to grant better futures to our loved ones and ourselves" (Parul Sehgal, The New York Times).
An estimated 50 million people in the world suffer from dementia. Diseases such as Alzheimer's erase parts of one's memory but are also often said to erase the self. People don't simply die from such diseases; they are imagined, in the clichés of our era, as vanishing in plain sight, fading away, or enduring a long goodbye. In
On Vanishing, Lynn Casteel Harper, a Baptist minister and nursing home chaplain, investigates the myths and metaphors surrounding dementia and aging, addressing not only the indignities caused by the condition but also by the rhetoric surrounding it. Harper asks essential questions about the nature of our outsize fear of dementia, the stigma this fear may create, and what it might mean for us all to try to "vanish well."
Weaving together personal stories with theology, history, philosophy, literature, and science, Harper confronts our elemental fears of disappearance and death, drawing on her experiences with people with dementia both in the U.S. health-care system and within her own family. In the course of unpacking her own stories and encounters--of leading a prayer group on a dementia unit; of meeting individuals dismissed as "already gone" and finding them still possessed of complex, vital inner lives; of witnessing her grandfather's final years with Alzheimer's and discovering her own heightened genetic risk of succumbing to the disease--Harper engages in an exploration of dementia that is unlike anything written before on the subject.
Expanding our understanding of dementia beyond progressive vacancy and dread,
On Vanishing makes room for beauty and hope, and opens a space in which we might start to consider better ways of caring for, and thinking about, our fellow human beings. It is a rich and startling work of nonfiction that reveals cognitive change as an essential aspect of what it means to be mortal.
Review
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
"A searching, poetic inquiry into dementia. . . . [Harper] writes without fear or aversion but with a robust, restless curiosity, a keenness to reframe our understanding of dementia with sensitivity and accuracy. . . . In her beautifully unconventional book, Harper examines the porousness of the borders, the power of imagination and language to grant better futures to our loved ones and ourselves." —Parul Sehgal,
The New York Times
"[A] calm, clear-eyed discussion of new ways to see dementia and its impact on the individual." —Gemma Tarlach,
Discover
"
On Vanishing is a book that lingers in the mind for weeks. One reason for this is Harper’s striking language. The prose is dynamic and a joy to follow . . . On the grander scale,
On Vanishing does nothing less than push its readers to rethink what it means to be a person: what parts of me could change or fade and yet allow me to remain myself? Who am I, actually?" —Caleb Tankersley,
North American Review
"Harper envisions a future where the eldery and those with dementia don’t have to disappear from mainstream society, and instead of living in fear of the disease we can live in acceptance of it. So many of the ideas in
On Vanishing are especially relevant now, in the age of the Covid-19 pandemic, as issues of ageism have come to the forefront of society." —Bailey Cook Dailey,
Catapult magazine
"A compassionate collection of essays examining dementia from an unusually hopeful point of view . . . Harper moves smoothly between abstract reflections and concrete experiences, reflecting often on the effects of dementia on her grandfather and on her relationship with him, her fears that a genetic link to the disease may have been passed down to her, and her encounters with many individuals, all descri