artist - writer - jewelry maker
© 2024 Ginda Simpson ~ artist, writer, jewelry maker
Do you find yourself perplexed by the changes you see in your aging parent? Are you concerned about what it means to lose a parent to Alzheimer’s? Will you be able to care for them with the patience and love that is required?
I learned much throughout my father’s unforgettable and invaluable journey with Alzheimer’s. With pen and paintbrush in hand, I drew this portrait using both images and words to record what my family and I experienced. As a physician, writer and teacher, my father would have wanted his final life journey to illustrate and illuminate, for both his family and the medical community, the mysteries and the magnitude of Alzheimer’s. Confident that my father would have wanted me to write this story, I set herself to the task. Love Endures All Things is my way of honoring my father, a man of infinite courage and integrity. His was an extraordinary life. My hope is that her words will offer comfort and courage to others on a similar journey.
Originally published in 2010, this 2024 edition has been newly designed with original images and updated information about Alzheimer's disease.
In Love Endures All Things, Ginda Simpson takes us on a brief, yet intimate, journey as she recalls and replays her father's journey into that long and deep night that is called Alzheimer's disease. She allows us to peek inside of her memories as her father slowly loses his. As a writer, Simpson creates a simple, loving, mosaic of her father's labors to throw off his adversary. As a painter, she creates a subtle, progressive image that Alzheimer's brings to both the family and the victim of this insidious disease. In this simple, poetic book, we see and almost experience, the struggle of one man, who is still loved and revered by daughter, family, and colleagues. Yet, this book breathes life and an understanding that the journey for the caregiver alone has meaning and importance.
-J. Coleman
Ginda's use of progressively fragmenting artwork to describe the progressive fragmentation of mind and memory is a stroke of genius. I found this book both beautiful to look at and comforting in the way she writes such an uplifting account of a horrible and difficult subject. Ginda has given us a compassionate account of one family's "journey of ever shifting reality".
- Nancy
Ginda Simpson has put a name and personality to the tragically debilitating disease of Alzheimer's. Through her compassionate and tender recounting of her father’s decline as he descended into the dark and frightening world of this disease, she enables the reader to not only feel the deep sadness and tragedy of their family's journey, but to also gain insight into the hope and strength that can be attained from accompanying a loved one on this journey. For anyone who has been touched by Alzheimer's, it provides a much-needed respite from the oftentimes confusing, frustrating, and tragic daily existence of living with this disease.
- Holly Phares