Just shy of seventy, Alex Witchel’s brilliant, adoring, ultra-capable college professor mother began to exhibit undeniable signs of dementia. She became forgetful and easily agitated. She gave the same lecture twice, and was forced to retire. How did her brilliant, adoring, ultra-capable, ace reporter daughter...
cope? At first with denial: If something was broken, well, with the best medical help money could buy they would figure out how to fix it, and restore Mom to all her former sharpness and glory.
Even as medical reality undid that hope, the habit of longing persisted in its most primal form: “As my mother began the torturous process of disappearing in plain sight, I retreated to my kitchen, trying to reclaim her at the stove. Is there any contract tighter than a family recipe?
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