The Silkworm, The Magician, and The Sister Tree:
A Tale of Love and Loss
Written by Suzy McNamara
The Silkworm, The Magician, and The Sister Tree: A Tale of Love and Loss
This memoir is a story of survival-survival of the loss of a husband and sister and survival of the heartbreak and hardship of caring for a spouse with early-onset Alzheimer’s.
This is also a love story between two kindred spirits who found each other despite vastly different backgrounds and two sisters who forged a bond amongst the chaos of their childhood and relied on that bond throughout lives steeped in tragedy and trauma.
I found ways to survive and my hope is that my memoir will accompany those on their own journey of grief and trauma towards their own path of survival.
Excerpt from The Silkworm, The Magician, and The Sister Tree: A Tale of Love and Loss
After it all ended I spent some time wondering why God wanted me to be alone. Within a few short months I watched my baby sister and husband die and it struck me that God must be sending me a message. I was just too tired and lonely to figure out what that message could be.
I watched a lifetime of love slip away in one year. I watched a lifetime of purpose and meaning slip away in one year. I watched myself slip away in one year. But I was still here and I had to find some love, some purpose and some me in the next few months while I tried to heal. Writing this memoir, and telling my tale so that others could see themselves in my book and heal along with me, is my way of taking those first terrifying steps into the rest of my life.
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Last year, I lost my husband to early-onset Alzheimer’s after five years of caring for him in our home. Seven months before my husband passed, I lost my sister unexpectedly to pulmonary disease. My sister had been my best friend my entire life and to lose her just as I was facing the biggest challenge of my life completely wrecked me. I had to muster whatever strength I could so that I could care for and accompany my husband in the final months of his truly horrific disease.
Caring for a spouse with early-onset Alzheimer’s comes with baggage that other caregivers do not carry. The world can feel pretty unfriendly and definitely frightening for caregivers navigating the physical and emotional demands of caregiving, which are especially perilous when your husband or wife is younger than the typical Alzheimer’s sufferer.
Loss of identity destroys an Alzheimer’s patient. For a victim of early-onset Alzheimer’s that loss of identity is magnified by loss of employment at what should be the height of their professional careers. Marriages, friendships, and relationships with their kids should be thriving and vibrant at the young age (40s and 50s) that early-onset strikes. Those relationships transform overnight for every victim of the disease. Suddenly they are not the providers, the lovers, the strong fathers, the smart and funny friends. They are the sick and impaired people who cannot function without constant assistance. The world keeps reinforcing their deepest fear that they are failures. They have to be constantly reminded that they didn’t fail—they got sick. Caregivers have to salvage what’s left of their loved one’s sense that they are valued to make them feel safe and loved. Every day is a search for joy amongst the ruins, a constant bobbing and weaving away from an overwhelming amount of challenges while grabbing for sparks of light to shine on their spouse.
While writing my book I was lucky enough to hear so many stories from women who had lost their own sister. Stories about hilarious phone conversations or incredible acts of kindness or fights over nothing that were laughed about later, stories that spanned years and years of never-ending friendship and conversation, sparked the feelings of warmth and connection that my sister gave me every day. I am hopeful that my own stories in this book bring that same warmth and connection to any reader that has suffered the loss of a sister or a friend.
Writing this book was pretty painful at times, but it also brought me great moments of joy. The greatest tragedies usually start with the greatest love stories and so does mine. When my husband was sick, and different in so many ways to the man I had fallen in love with and lived with for over thirty years, memories of the magical times between us were too painful, as were the constant interior flashes of my sister’s beautiful face and lovely laugh. Reliving the stories of the storybook romance with my husband and the childhood and adult adventures with my sister so that my readers could know who my favorite people were before they got sick, and understand the connections that we had before they were destroyed by illness and death, made those love stories come alive for me again.
In my book, I also relive my faith journey which I am told is quite unusual. Though discouraged from participating in any faith practice as a child, I eventually developed a strong spiritual connection which became key to maintaining the strength I needed to withstand the heartaches I experienced throughout my life.
I wanted to write this book because I am hoping to throw a lifeline to anyone who feels like they are drowning from stress and grief. Caring for a spouse with Alzheimer’s is tough, losing a husband is tough, losing a sister is tough. All of these heartbreaks are isolating. I hope that by sharing my story others feel understood and confident that there is joy and love in this life for them. I found ways to get through those experiences in one piece, and I hope that I can inspire people to use the lessons I learned or find their own ways to survive.