MMC is proud of Cathie’s work in bringing awareness to Alzheimer’s Disease.
The Long Hello ~ Memory, My Mother, and Me
Since Cathie Borrie delivered a keynote performance at MoMA (for World Alzheimer’s Day), her work has won rapturous praise from noted writers and experts alike, from Maya Angelou, Lisa Genova, and Molly Peacock to Dr. Bill Thomas, Jed A. Levine of CaringKind NYC, and Meryl Comer of the Geoffrey Beene Foundation Alzheimer’s Initiative.
Written in spare, beautiful prose, The Long Hello distills the seven years the author spent caring for her mother into a page-turning memoir that offers insight into the “altering world of the dementia mind.” During that time, Borrie recorded brief conversations she had with her mother that revealed the transformations within— often yielding a Zen-like poetry. She includes selections from them in chapters about her experience that are as evocative as diary entries. Her mother was the emotional pillar and sometime breadwinner in a home touched by a birth father’s alcoholism, a brother’s early death, divorce, and a stepfather’s remoteness. In Borrie’s spare prose, her mother’s story becomes a family’s story as well a deeply loving portrait that embraces life. The Long Hello demonstrates how long term caregiving, in any situation, creates an opportunity to experience the change in a relationship that illness necessitates – in which joy, meaning, and profound intimacy can flourish.
Cathie performs inspirational theatrical readings based on the text, often accompanied by musicians, like BILL SAMPLE!
Available in Canada and the U.S. in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.