Dementia's Dutiful Daughters: Narratives of Memory and Its Caregivers

• In Event: 45.076 - Intimate Stories of Lived Experience

Abstract

In this paper, we present, perform and critically explore interwoven narratives of daughter care from the perspective of two different daughters from two different mothers to disrupt what Gibson (2015) describes as the “right dementia story” (p. 4). This narrative inquiry also uncovers the ways in which assumptions of cognitive plateaus insinuated by constructions of the life-long learner exclude the complicated ways of knowing that dementia demands. Further, our paper narratively explores questions related to the epistemological labor of caring for our mothers’ memories and narrative inquiry’s role in helping us make meaning of the “fragile freight” of memory in moments of its loosening (Haddas, 2011, p.14).

Authors

• Laura M. Jewett, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

• Zulema Williams, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley