A A THOMAS
EVERY WRITER OWES A DEBT TO THE PAST
CODA : HIS FINAL SOLO
2024 : WORK IN PROGRESS
A memoir, a family portrait forged through the lens of vascular dementia.
“We drew strength from habits forgotten and stories remembered. We found strength in the absurd, the exasperating and the ordinary. We found that why begins with what went before, and that the invisible threads that bind origin and meaning are not bound by time.”
You play strength, vulnerability, despair, frustration and sorrow side by side, against each other … which is beautiful.
​Your story is a shared experience for the numberless people who go through this every day, beaten, defeated, guilty … and that it is ok, this is who we are.
We learn to see anguish as a walking companion, really.
Dr. Susan Oommen
Academician & Head (Retd), Dept of English, Stella Maris College
Chennai, India
Read the book a second time - lots of tears. Much more than the first reading.
Your situations and circumstances are reflected in my personal life; 'the mirror of our minds', to use your Dad's phrase.
The book helps a reader assuage some of the uncomfortable feelings that linger when someone with a chronic illness passes on.
I can imagine the emotional assault while writing this book, and the lifting of a heavy burden, now that it has been written. Dr. R Sadashivan
Director, Far East Medical Practitioners, Singapore
Singapore
