Book Published on Amazon Kindle – Grandma Messner’s Memories of Alzheimer’s

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve published my first book on Amazon Kindle, GRANDMA MESSNER’S MEMORIES OF ALZHEIMER’S.

GRANDMA MESSNER’S MEMORIES OF ALZHEIMER’S echoes the disconnected recollections of a family matriarch as the filters of her life are lifted, casting her on a metaphysical journey amidst several generations of her relatives as they seek to reconstruct her collective meaning.

My grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease, and this novella is a series of short stories and poetic passages written from her point of view as well as that of various family members, nurses, and fellow Alzheimer’s patients.

You can buy Grandma Messner’s Memories of Alzheimer’s from Amazon.com for only $0.99.

There are no restrictions on it, so you can download it onto anything you want (Kindle, computer, iPhone, etc.), transfer it between various devices, or do whatever you want with it, plus hopefully read it.

Here’s the opening chapter for your reading pleasure:

GRANDMA MESSNER’S MEMORIES OF ALZHEIMER’S

1

When she was young, Elizabeth counted the beads of her rosary endlessly. She uttered prayers to the rhythm of her heartbeat — slowly and surely, but slightly stuttered — with an irregularity that followed her beyond her Hail Marys through the repetitions of her life.

The abnormality of her heart hovered above her on the bus when she was fourteen as her mother told the tragedy of their life to unwitting strangers. Elizabeth would cry later at home alone, because hearing the stories in public made them truer, but there in the uncomfortable seats, she just stared out the dirty windows at the streets going by, the same two-story brick houses, grimy gas stations and bars she saw every day on their way to St. Mary’s church where her mother brought her to pray for her soul.

Her unpredictable heartbeat followed her into the pews, where every third syllable of her Our Fathers fluttered off her lips. Her mother filled in the spaces with her moans, calling for the curse that had caused the affliction of her daughter’s heart to stagger and loosen its grip. She chanted healing hymnals next to Elizabeth, but no cure would come, not for years later when she finally learned how to forget.

It was later, after they had returned by bus and Elizabeth had helped her walk the six blocks home, when her mother made her count the walnut rosary. In her bedroom alone, she sat stammering until sundown when her mother called her for dinner at the wooden table that rose to her shoulders as she sat square to it. It was there that Elizabeth finally relaxed while she spooned steaming stew which stilled her lips as she blew over it.

That was one thing that never changed about her mother: her cooking; because when she stood at her stove, she was back in Italy before the war, back with her sisters and parents whom Elizabeth had never met. There, within the foggy-windowed sanctuary of the kitchen, she was home again in Salerno; she had never left, and her husband, Elizabeth’s father, had never died.

This is where Elizabeth loved and where she felt love, so she counted her rosary silently within the simmering prayers of her mother’s herbs, waiting to forget.

End chapter 1

If you enjoyed this, please check out the rest on Amazon Kindle.

If you haven’t tried Amazon Kindle and want to publish your book, it’s a free and easy alternative to publishing online.

Thank you very much, and as always, please feel free to leave comments below, whether they’re good, bad, or ugly.