For fans of Atul Gawande being human, Eula Biss’s on gloves and Paul Kalanithi’s when the breath breathes, On Vanishing provides a gracious examination of dementia, asking questions about what it means to face our disappearance.

An estimated 50 million people worldwide suffer from mental illness. Diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease erase memory, but it is often said to erase self. People do not just die from diseases like these; they can be assumed in the pillars of our time, such as disappearing in a convenient location, fading, or long comfort. In “The Vanishing”, Lynn Casteel Harper, a Baptist minister and church in nursing homes, examines stories and examples about dementia and aging and not only controls the prejudice caused by the condition, but also the discomfort surrounding it. Harper poses important questions about the nature of our greatest fear of dementia, the stigma this fear can create, and what it can mean for all of us to try to get away with it.
A Registry of My Passage upon

By placing personal stories from theology, history, philosophy, literature, and science, Harper parallels our basic fear of extinction and death and builds on her own experiences with people with dementia in the care system and within her family. Home Work by Julie Andrews Edwards
When to open their stories and meetings with gang leadership in the psychiatric department; Meet lost people who are lost and you find those who still have a hard, inward life; witnessing their ancestors in recent years with Alzheimer’s disease and discovering their increased genetic risk of the disease. Harper is involved in the study of dementia unlike anything previously written on the topic.

Van Vanishing broadens our understanding of dementia and the celebration of continual fear and provides space for beauty and hope and opens up a space in which we can begin to think of better ways to care and think about our loved ones. It is a rich and fascinating non-fiction work that portrays cognitive change as an integral part of what it means to be deadly…