Patti Davis – författare

Ronald Reagan’s daughter writes with a moving openness about losing her father to Alzheimer’s disease. The simplicity with which she reveals the intensity, the rush, the flow of her feelings encompasses all the surprises and complexities that ambush us when death gradually, unstoppably invades life. In The Long Goodbye, Patti Davis describes losing her father to Alzheimer’s disease, saying goodbye in stages, helpless against the onslaught of a disease that steals what is most precious–a person’s memory. “Alzheimer’s,” she writes, “snips away at the threads, a slow unraveling, a steady retreat; as a witness all you can do is watch, cry, and whisper a soft stream of goodbyes.” She writes of needing to be reunited at forty-two with her mother (“she had wept as much as I over our long, embittered war”), of regaining what they had spent decades demolishing; a truce was necessary to bring together a splintered family, a few weeks before her father released his letter telling the country and the world of his illness . . . The author delves into her memories to touch her father again, to hear his voice, to keep alive the years she had with him. She writes as if past and present were coming together, of her memories as a child, holding her father’ s hand, and as a young woman whose hand is being given away in marriage by her father . . . of her father teaching her to ride a bicycle, of the moment when he let her go and she went off on her own . . . of his teaching her the difference between a hawk and a buzzard . . . of the family summer vacations at a rented beach house–each of them tan, her father looking like the athlete he was, with a swimmer’s broad shoulders and lean torso. . . . She writes of how her father never resisted solitude, in fact was born for it, of that strange reserve that made people reach for him. . . . She recalls him sitting at his desk, writing, staring out the window . . . and she writes about the toll of the disease itself, the look in her father’s eyes, and her efforts to reel him back to her. Moving . . . honest . . . an illuminating portrait of grief, of a man, a disease, and a woman and her father. With a preface written by the author for the eBook edition.

“For the decade of my father’s illness, I felt as if I was floating in the deep end, tossed by waves, carried by currents, but not drowning,” writes Patti Davis in this searingly honest and deeply moving account of the challenges involved in taking care of someone stricken with Alzheimer’s.When her father, Ronald Reagan, announced his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in an address to the American public in 1994, the world had not yet begun speaking about this cruel, mysterious disease. Yet overnight, Reagan and his immediate family became the face of Alzheimer’s, and Davis, once content to keep her family at arm’s length, quickly moved across the country to be present during “the journey that would take [him] into the sunset of [his] life.”Empowered by all she learned from caring for her father—about the nature of the illness but also about the loss of a parent—Davis founded a support group for the family members and friends of Alzheimer’s patients. Along with a medically trained co-facilitator, she met with hundreds of exhausted and devastated attendees to talk through their pain and confusion. While Davis was aware that her own circumstances were uniquely fortunate, she knew there were universal truths about dementia and even surprising gifts to be found in a long goodbye.With Floating in the Deep End, Davis draws on a welter of experiences to provide a singular account of battling Alzheimer’s. Eloquently woven with personal anecdotes and helpful advice tailored specifically for the overlooked caregiver, this essential guide covers every potential stage of the disease from the initial diagnosis through the ultimate passing and beyond. Including such tips as how to keep a loved one hygienic, and careful responses for when they drift to a time gone by, Davis always stresses the emotional milestones that come with slow-burning grief.

As a frequent guest columnist for The New York Times, Patti Davis has distinguished herself as a contemporary storyteller. Far from being the enfant terrible she was once portrayed to be, Davis here turns an honest yet empathetic eye toward her parents, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, combining bittersweet recollections—of her father, the eternal lifeguard, who saved 77 people from drowning yet failed to create a coherent AIDS policy, and of her mother, who never escaped the torture chamber of her own youth—with comedic scenes as if plucked from a sitcom as she describes marrying her yoga instructor at the Hotel Bel-Air, hiding her marijuana stash from the FBI and constantly evading the Secret Service. An inherently wise work about a family finally reunited through Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Dear Mom and Dad will be readily appreciated by any adult grappling with the legacy of a troubled childhood.

The title The Lives Our Mothers Leave Us encapsulates what this book by Patti Davis is about. No matter what a woman achieves in her life, no matter how old she gets or whether or not she herself becomes a mother, she is always and forever a daughter. The Women Whose Stories Are Included . . .Patti Davis, Anne Rice, Carolyn See, Marg Helgenberger, Melissa Gilbert, Carnie Wilson, Rosanna Arquette, Mariel Hemingway, Anna Quindlen, Angelica Huston, Mary Kay Place, Ruby Dee, Faye Wattleton, Julianne Margulies, Lily Tomlin, Diahann Carroll, Candice Bergen, Marianne Williamson, Sherry Lansing, Whoopie Goldberg, Lorna Luft, Cokie Roberts, Alice Hoffman, Kathy Smith, and Linda Bloodworth Thomason.

“For the decade of my father’s illness, I felt as if I was floating in the deep end, tossed by waves, carried by currents but not drowning.” In a singular account of battling Alzheimer’s, Patti Davis eloquently weaves personal anecdotes with practical advice tailored specifically for the overlooked caregiver. After losing her father, Ronald Reagan, Davis founded a support group for family members and friends of Alzheimer’s patients; drawing on those years, Davis reveals the surprising struggles and gifts of this cruel disease. From the challenges of navigating disorientation to the moments when guilt and resentments creep in, readers are guided gently through slow-burning grief. Along the way, Davis shares how her own fractured family came together and how her father revealed his true self—always kind, even when he couldn’t recognise his own daughter. The result is an achingly beautiful work on the fragile human condition from a profoundly wise and empathetic writer.