The long hello

"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--and sometimes yielded an almost Zenlike 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…