Originally published April, 2019.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Sarah B. Smith was in her thirties when her mom, affectionately known as Beauty by the family, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer\u2019s disease. <\/span><\/span><\/span>Smith tells how the disease affected not only her mom but the entire family and close friends in her moving, spiritual account, Broken Beauty: Piecing Together Lives Shattered by Early-Onset Alzheimer\u2019s<\/em> (Greenleaf Book Group, $16.95 paperback). <\/span><\/span><\/span>\u201cMy journey with my mom has been wonderful, painful, terrifying, life-affirming, crazy-making, and beautiful,\u201d she writes. \u201cOver the past several years, I\u2019ve walked through a lifetime\u2019s worth of heartache and hope\u2014as have my dad, my husband, my children, and the many friends who\u2019ve walked beside me.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThis book is my love letter to my mom and God\u2019s abiding love. It\u2019s a story about how love can turn even a tragic, heartbreaking battle into a daily testimony of redemption and grace.\u201d Beauty was diagnosed in 2012, but Smith said she and her dad and close friends had noticed a decline in Beauty\u2019s mental faculties for two or three years before the diagnosis. She feared her mother had a brain tumor, but her mother refused to see a doctor. And it was several months after the diagnosis before her dad revealed what the doctor had said, against Beauty\u2019s wish that it remain confidential. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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By that point, Smith writes, her dad needed help. He said, \u201cI just can\u2019t keep this a secret anymore.\u201d Her mom and dad moved from Houston to Dallas so Smith could help take care of Beauty. <\/span><\/span><\/span>Smith chronicles her mother\u2019s mental decline and the author\u2019s own anguish, many prayers, and tears, in helping her dad make decisions concerning Beauty\u2019s well-being. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Most of the book focuses on the year 2016 when the disease had reached the point where Smith and her dad made the agonizing decision to place Beauty in a memory-care facility for her own safety. One night she drank fingernail polish remover, thinking it was Diet Coke. Another time she dropped her bowl full of cereal and it broke, then she tried to keep eating out of the broken bowl. <\/span><\/span><\/span>Finally, on August 11, 2016\u2014what Smith called \u201cAbandonment Day\u201d\u2014Smith took her mother to the facility and left her, because her dad just couldn\u2019t do it. Smith said, \u201cI felt like a traitor to my own mother.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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By the end of the year, although Beauty\u2019s decline continued, Smith, her dad, and family and friends were able to connect with her, enjoy time with her, even dance with her, and in return they felt blessed by her sweet spirit. <\/span><\/span><\/span>\u201cAs Mom continues her journey,\u201d Smith writes, \u201cI\u2019ve learned to live in the moment and live in her world. If she tells me an apple is orange, then by golly that apple is orange!\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cI don\u2019t want to live with any regrets. I will continue to look into her heart, and eyes, and facial expressions, and will do my best to co-labor with God in her new world each day.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span>The book concludes with a reading group guide and an insightful seventeen-question Q&A with the author.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Originally published April, 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[883,813,830,849],"class_list":["post-1563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glenndromgoole","tag-lone-star-literary-life","tag-lonestarliterarycom","tag-texasreads"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}