Sarah
Leavitt’s graphic memoir, Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My
Mother, and Me, narrates and vividly illustrates the pain and difficulty of
caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease. Leavitt’s memoir shares her
family’s experiences nursing their mother, Midge Leavitt, for six years
following her diagnosis at the early age of 52. “I created this book,” Leavitt
explains, “to remember her as she was before she got sick, but also to remember
her as she was during her illness, the ways in which she was transformed and
the way in which parts of her endured” (Leavitt 1). The memoir’s spare, black-and-white
panels trace her mother’s deterioration from the first, seemingly innocuous
symptoms (such as misremembering conversations and forgetting to unplug an
iron) to the debilitating and tragic manifestations of Alzheimer’s, such as
confusion, behavioral changes, aphasia, and ultimately, the inability to
recognize loved ones. As greatly painful as these experiences were for Leavitt,
she singles out from the murk and monotony of caregiving moments that inspire
laughter, introspection, and gratitude. Early one morning, Leavitt’s mother
wakes her to admire a fresh, “glittering” snowfall (86). On another occasion,
Leavitt illustrates a rainstorm. Instead of keeping dry, her mother wants to
stand in the downpour: “So finally we let go of her. She stuck out her tongue
to taste the rain” (78). For Leavitt, humor brings, if not understanding, comfort when the stifling presence of her mother’s suffering goes momentarily unfelt. Caregiving also stirs recollections about her mother’s
personality. Leavitt remembers, for instance, her mother’s love of Granny Smith
apples: “She ate the core and stem and everything, crunching loudly” (23). She
remembers her mother’s love of nature, “. . . plants, worms, rocks, soil. She
did not seem separate from it as most people did” (93). Her mother also adores
the poetry of E. E. Cummings and Robert Frost and Aretha Franklin’s music.
Leavitt does not allow suffering to efface her mother’s personality, providing
a poignantly moving account of how caregiving shapes memory and deepens family
love in unexpected ways.
