“Too often when people get sick, we refer to them as their disease. We overlook the richness of experience and personality that underlies that person. We forget their life, their contributions. And this is never truer than when facing the reality of memory loss, when a person slowly recedes from the identity they’ve manifested for so long. I wrote my book to share the story of my mother and to provide an antidote to this invisibility.”

So says Dwayne J. Clark in his new book, “My Mother, My Son” (Aegis Living, February 2012).

Clark is the founder and CEO of Aegis Living, a progressive company that runs assisted living communities. His mother, Mary Colleen Callahan Clark, was diagnosed with both Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

“Several years into her decline, in a sad irony, my mother became a resident in one of the assisted living communities run by the company I had founded. The mother, the person who had pushed me so hard to achieve worldly success, was now living in the very business I had started as a fulfillment of our shared dream,” Clark explains. “In describing her 10-year-long odyssey with Alzheimer’s and interweaving it with the stories and lessons that made up the whole of her life, and mine, too, I hope others will take away lessons in how to ‘do’ this passage and to find one’s way – in spite of the challenges.”

Clark continues, “If anyone should have been prepared for my mother’s disease, it should have been me. I’ve spent almost my entire life devoted to services and communities that care for the elderly, and I’ve seen all of the difficulties and challenges that patients and their families contend with. But I wasn’t prepared – not by a long shot. And throughout my mother’s ordeal, I came to the realization that no one ever is. It’s not until someone we love – someone we care for and are responsible for – is gradually pulled away from us by the disease that the reality sinks into our hearts and souls.”

He points out that it is normal for family members of a person experiencing dementia and Alzheimer’s symptoms to deny that possibility for as long as possible and to attempt to maintain a “regular” life. Yet there are huge benefits for everyone – including better medical care, leading to better quality of life for the patient and family members, better caretaking of the patient, support for loved ones, and the opportunities to create closeness and closure – when they face the disease.

The most memorable advice Clark would share with families members whose loved ones suffer from dementia include:

• Try not to feel guilty. None of this is your fault.

• Ask for, and accept, help.

• Try to be easy on yourself. This may well be the most difficult thing you’ll ever do.

• Take time for yourself to meditate, to walk alone, to sit in silence – and breathe deeply.

• Love all, trust few, and paddle your own canoe.

The latter is what Clark’s mother always used to say. “As her son, it’s my job to carry that message forward. Now, though, I think she’d appreciate this added sentiment: Even though we are all paddling our own canoe, we all share the same vast ocean of water, trying to make the most of what we are given, and trying to find our own truth,” Clark said.

“My Mother My Son” is for sale at Aegis Lodge in Kirkland, you may obtain a copy by contacting Sandra Cook at sandra.cook@aegisliving.com. The price per book is $30, plus tax, with all profits benefiting the Alzheimer’s Association and The Potato Soup Foundation.