Overview

A Story of a Marriage Through Dementia and Beyond is the extraordinary, unflinching account from sociologist Laurel Richardson of her love and caregiving through the last period of her husband Ernest Lockridge's life - from his transient amnesia to his death from Lewy Body Dementia. Focusing on the lived experience of the caregiver through the loved one’s journey from mild cognitive impairment to death, the book gives the reader the experience of what the medical diagnoses mean and what has led up to the loss. It shows the complex, nuanced lives of a couple both living with the worst effects of a disease like Lewy Body Dementia, while maintaining, sometimes with hope and laughter, their loving connection nourished through a 40-year marriage. Dementia is a ‘silver tsunami’ - the third leading cause of death amongst senior populations. Richardson’s beautifully written book gives on-the-ground emotional support to those already in service as caregivers and helps prepare others for such service. Hospices, book clubs, and medical and allied professionals will find this book extraordinarily valuable. Weaving in autoethnographic and sociological methods and scholarship, as well as a list of reading and further resources for caregivers and scholars, this book will also appeal to courses in a wide range of disciplines and fields, including health communication, nursing and allied health, courses covering death and dying, end-of-life, and illness care, and, of course, scholars pursuing autoethnography, creative non-fiction, and qualitative methods.

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9781032181158

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Laurel Richardson is a Distinguished Emeritus Academy Professor of Sociology at The Ohio State University, USA. She has been honored with Lifetime Achievement awards in her profession and in Who’s Who in America and the world, and is the author of eleven previous books. Ernest Lockridge, a Yale Ph.D., was an Emeritus Professor of English at The Ohio State University, author of three novels, a jazz musician and a visual artist. Laurel Richardson and Ernest Lockridge were married from 1980 until Ernest’s death in 2020.

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