In recognition of Alzheimer Awareness Month, UTP asked author Janice Graham to contribute the following words on the book that she recently co-edited with Peter Stephenson, Contesting Aging and Loss:
Last November, The Globe and Mail began running a stark, full-page advertisement depicting a gravestone under the banner “It’s never a question of if, always a question of when.” The ad read: “Alzheimer’s disease takes everything from you. When will it take your ability to think, understand, appreciate, and tell jokes? When will you no longer be able to do something as simple as making coffee? When will your spouse, children, siblings, and friends start to grieve the person they love, though you are still there in body? Alzheimer’s disease takes everything that makes you who you are…. And when it’s done taking everything, it takes your life.”
The ad ends with a plea to “give generously to help find a cure.”
The fact remains that there is no cure, despite the proliferation of a clinical research industry dedicated to a pharmaceutical magic bullet. What other alternatives are there?
In Contesting Aging and Loss, we wallop this dominant biomedical paradigm of loss and inevitable decline that has seeped into how Canadians view aging. By approaching aging from the viewpoints of those growing old, much can be done besides waiting for a cure. Contesting Aging and Loss discovers people who continue to live fulfilled lives that are multifaceted and encompass many experiences, beyond a deep sense of loss. The voices here contest the reduction of aging to disease, decline, and dementia, and the idea that much of what we experience as we age is inevitable. As such, the book is intended to be a corrective that is based on ethnographic evidence. Drawing from South Africa, the Netherlands, Australia, and Canada, the stories provide a rich resource for a senior-centred approach to living and continuing to grow.
