My name is Gerda Saunders, I have dementia. From 2016 to 2022, RadioWest and/or PBS Utah recorded how my family and I strive to live joyously despite my loss of memory and identity. From this footage they produced the 1-hour documentary, The Gerda That Remains
Latest Blog Posts
My Knight in Shining Armor read “Letter to Gerda” at AlzAuthor-Kensington zoom dementia discussion yesterday
Featured image: Joseph Christian Leyendecker (American, 1874-1951). Lune de miel (Honeymoon), The Saturday Evening Post cover, July 17, 1926. Peter sent me this remarkable letter the day before Thanksgiving after I had a bad patch of dementia trouble for a while. Peter, you are my Rock, my husband, my lover, my Love, without whom I […]
Updated link for Zoom talk with 2 dementers and 2 caregivers Wed Nov 29, 6 pm EST; 4 pm MT (Utah), 3 pm PST
Featured image: Thanks so much Peter for superimposing the photos of the discussion participants over Canadian Indigenous painter Norval Morrisseau‘s Androgyny (1983). Neuropsycholologists longitudinally studied the work of artists who would later suffer from cognitive decline, including that of Morrisseau ,who developed Parkinson’s disease. They found changes artists’ “fractals,” ie, the unique and repeated patterns […]
Wed Nov 29 Zoom discussion: Marianne Sciuccio (dementia caregiver), retired neurologist Daniel Gibbs (has dementia); Jane Dwinnell (caregiver); and Gerda (dementer)
Featured image: Thanks so much, Peter, for superimposing the panelists’ photos on the brain image from Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen, Ivy Ross, et al. WHAT: Kensington Holiday Caregiver Book Club: Wisdom & Insight from Authors Living with Dementia: AlzAuthors is partnering with Kensington Senior Living for a […]
Time, love, and the body: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower,/ Drives my green age”
Title: Opening lines of Dylan Thomas’s 1933 poem “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower” Featured image: This shot of a Glistening-Green Tanager (Chlorochrysa phoenicotis) poised between two leaves on Ecuador’s Mashpi Amagusa Reserve, taken by Nicolas Reusens, was named Best Portrait at the 2023 Bird Photographer of the Year awards. There’s […]
You ask, Gerda & 4 dementia buddies tell “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Living with Dementia”
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, in June, 2021, AlzAuthors hosted five of us who are currently living with dementia to a virtual discussion where we shared our stories. That is where I first had “live” communication with my dementia buddies Peter Berry, Jennifer Bute, and Wendy Mitchell from the UK and Michael […]
Failing toward the moon: as Doña Quixote tumbles toward the dark side, Gerda is gentled into a course correction
Featured image: Still from a 1902 French short film titled A Trip to the Moon ( Le Voyage dans la Lune) directed by Georges Méliès. Inspired by sources, including Jules Verne’s “moon” novels the film follows a group of astronomers who travel to the Moon in a cannon-propelled capsule, explore the Moon’s surface, escape from […]
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.”
Title quote: Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar, a novel in which the protagonist descends into mental illness. Featured image: One of photographer Tony Luciani’s countless photos of his mother who had dementia. He had been a full-time, professional fine artist since post-graduate studies in Florence, Italy in 1978. He also later also took up […]