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    On Vanishing: Mortality, Dementia, and What It Means to Disappear
    On Vanishing: Mortality, Dementia, and What It Means to Disappear
    On Vanishing: Mortality, Dementia, and What It Means to Disappear
    Audiobook6 hours

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

    Written by Lynn Casteel Harper

    Narrated by Petrea Burchard

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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.

    Editor's Note

    Enlightening look…

    Dementia has long been a condition both prolific and mysterious, affecting loved ones in millions of families around the world. Alzheimer’s and other diseases blot out the memories of those they afflict, giving them the illusion of vanishing in plain sight as they are moved to assisted living or cared for at home. Author Lynn Casteel Harper, a Baptist minister and nursing home chaplain, explores our fears of aging and dementia, and the stigma around it. Harper’s personal experiences are presented alongside theology, history, science, and more, eventually confronting her own genetic risks of developing Alzheimer’s. It’s a complicated, enlightening look at how “losing” one’s mind butts up against our own perceptions of mortality.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEverand Productions
    Release dateJan 12, 2021
    ISBN9781094412771
    On Vanishing: Mortality, Dementia, and What It Means to Disappear
    Author

    Lynn Casteel Harper

    Lynn Casteel Harper is a minister, chaplain, and essayist. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, North American Review, and Catapult magazine. She is a Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant recipient and the winner of the 2017 Orison Anthology Award in Nonfiction. She lives in New York City and is currently the minister of older adults at The Riverside Church.

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    Reviews for On Vanishing

    4.5/5

    47 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A most excellent book. Not only helpful for those dealing with Alzheimer’s or their caregivers. Everyone can learn from this.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Thought provoking book on living with dementia in all its forms.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      "I can count on one hand the occasions I saw administrators on the Gardens’ dementia unit spending time with residents and staff." – L.C. HarperI could choose among twenty great quotes and a myriad chunks of wisdom to find a lead – off to this review of Harper’s timely and timeless manifesto on the care of people living with some form of dementia. I chose the above, because it captures the distance from which higher caregivers treat those in their stewardship. It also hearkens to the business – model of care in America. In fact, though, I could have used many quotes or phrases to highlight other aspects of Harper’s work just as readily.Harper, a Protestant minister and former nursing home chaplain, tackles a very challenging subject, namely the way in which people suffering dementia should have their status as members of society maintained. Her work is a manifesto in which she brings numerous aspects and agents of care into focus, from religious institutions’ (primarily Christian) lack of focus to inappropriate drug administration, to the economic status of the hands – on employees tending to people (40% of whom, she notes, live off of public assistance themselves). Most of the book centers on the social psychology shaping how people perceive those in need of care as the title suggests. She promotes the view that the individual’s personal identity is paramount to sustain throughout every stage of decline, and the way to do this is to maintain a never – ending level of individual engagement to prevent “social death”.Using such politically incorrect terms as “lunacy”, she presents some unorthodox points to ponder. For example, lunacy / madness / psychoses are all “positives” in the sense of being qualities added to the persona. Dementia, on the other hand, is perceived as a reduction of the persona. Of the two semantic categories, she has a certain affinity for the former."What if we defied vacancy’s tyranny and returned to madness for a moment—not as demon possession or constraint or a way to classify and contain people—but as needful folly in a world of stifling convention? Vacancy seems to suppress imagination; madness stirs it. Might we direct these motions toward compassion? Madness, understood as a window on a social world less ruled by mental conformity, might have some salvageable meanings for dementia."Harper considers that a person suffering dementia is always a complete person, albeit with serious issues. The issues require attention as types of challenges rather than as deficits. A ‘lunatic’ has issues, an aged person with dementia is unhelpfully considered to have primarily vacancies.Also of interest is her frequent reference to Ralph Waldo Emerson, a favorite personality of mine. While I have quoted the man’s lines about thought and memory in my own writing, I did not know that he, himself, experienced some form of dementia. His inclusion, as a specific personality, rounded out the humanity of her discourse very nicely.Care for people with chronic dementia and memory issues generally, makes for dreadfully depressing reading. However, reading such work helps us all in reclaiming a bit of our humanity. Harper’s book helps define what problems need addressing to protect the dignity and quality of life for persons living with dementia either in themselves or someone in their care.

      1 person found this helpful