New book focuses on love and Alzheimer's
Shoshone News-Press Publisher Keri Alexander sits alongside Silver Valley author Brianne Grebil. Grebil has recently published a book regarding her experiences with her mother as she battled Alzheimer's disease. Alexander sat down with Grebil for a special interview on the SNP NOW Podcast.
Photo by JOSH McDONALD
Brianne Grebil kisses her mother, Jaylene's hands on her wedding day. Brianne discusses in her new book how her relationship with her mother evolved during their battle together against Alzheimer's Disease.
In the face of a hardship that she knew couldn’t get better, Silver Valley native Brianne Grebil decided to use her talents to ameliorate the situation and, hopefully, provide a resource that will help others who find themselves in a similar position.
Grebil recently sat down with Shoshone News-Press Publisher Keri Alexander for a special edition of the SNP NOW Podcast to discuss her new book, “Love doesn’t care if you forget,” which Grebil wrote as she walked alongside her mother, Jaylene Grebil, during her battled with Alzheimer's through the end of her life.
The short, but powerful 45-page book walks readers through the five lessons of love that Grebil discovered along the way.
What started out as almost an observational journaling process on Facebook, where Grebil was posting her thoughts and discoveries, prompted a large response from her social media following and made her think that there was a possibility for her to do more with the understanding that she was gaining.
“As I was walking the journey with my mom and changing so much of my life in a personal sense, I just realized that as I was trying to be with her as quickly as she was changing, I had to change with her in order to stay sane,” Grebil said. “I personally began to realize that I was transforming in the process. She was making me be something different and it became a deeper richer relationship.”
The five chapters of the book, each highlighting a specific lesson that Grebil learned, entitled "Love doesn’t care if you forget," "Love doesn’t care how you feel," "Love doesn’t care if you understand," "Love isn’t personal," and "Love doesn’t care what you know," all really drive home the thoughts and feelings that a person might go through as they try to rationalize the world according to Alzheimer's.
Throughout the interview, Alexander picked out some of her favorite passages and had Grebil expound upon them, but one of the passages really stood out.
Her favorite chapter, "Love doesn’t care if you understand," detailed out how the constraints of “normal” communication and interaction could be overcome when someone is going through mental deterioration.
“As my mom's Alzheimer's was progressing, her language, she was losing much of her vocabulary and then the vocabulary she had left didn't arrange itself in cohesive sentences,” Grebil said. “She was talking and I could tell she was expressing an idea but if you were looking at just the words it made no sense. Yet I found I still understood her at least in essence maybe not in specifics. I realized that while love is not in the kind of understanding that we think it is, it's something deeper that you can connect to beneath language and vocabulary. I found that I loved talking with my mom, it was a gibberish conversation, but I loved it.”
Jaylene Grebil passed away on July 31, 2020.
To learn more about Brianne Grebil, visit www.briannegrebil.com, to purchase a copy of "Love doesn’t care if you forget," you can go to Amazon or at www.loveanddementia.com/book.
To listen to the full interview between Keri Alexander and Brianne Grebil, please visit www.shoshonenewspress.com and find the SNP NOW tab, or find the SNP NOW Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Player FM and all major podcatchers.
