Donald Friedman brings his considerable literary gift to this memoir of despair, and with that gift fills the pages with the flickering light of the spirit. Seeing through his dying sisters eyes he discovers levels of perception unknown to him before. He helps his sister navigate a horrible hall of broken mirrorsbrain diseaseand in doing so he discovers a hidden lovewhich is usually the deepest love because we never suspect its there.William Kotzwinkle author of ET the Extraterrestrial and Felonious Monk Donald Friedman's Still Phyllis is a masterfully told memoir about the imperfect love of siblings and the meaning that can be found in facing terminal illness and death. It's full of deep thinking about CJD and the ravages of dementia, brilliant descriptions, and a rare gratitude for second chances. The final chapters will leave you in a puddle.Benjamin Anastas, author of Too Good To Be True Donald Friedmans memoir of caretaking his sister through her dementia, shows us that, while personhood may be diminished by illness, the soul of the sufferer remains and is there to connect with. He is eloquent about the guilt, confusion, and stresses caregiving exacts, and the struggle to maintain belief in a caring, just God. For those, like Friedman, who search for consolation outside religion, in philosophy, science, literatureall touched on herecomes the ultimate, welcome discovery that Gods presence is to be found in the world, that it could be seen, in the friends who did show, in the strangers who, unasked, stepped forward with kindnesses, large and small. Friedmans book will provide comfort and support for the manyreligious, or notdealing with the dementia of a friend or loved one.Rabbi Zoe B. Zak, Rabbi of Temple Israel of Catskill, co-author of The Cook and the Rabbi After years of estrangement, Donald Friedman brought his sister Phyllis into his home to die. During the next sixteen months, as Phyllis deteriorated from a rare brain disease, her brother and his wife did their best to make every day count. Still Phyllis is a powerful, beautifully told, heart-wrenching story that demands all of us to consider the complex, unbreakable bonds of family and to marvel at the redemptive magic of love.Peter Golden, author of Nothing Is Forgotten If love is all there is, this beautiful memoir of a brothers love for his sister as she dies from an extremely rare, cruelly disintegrating illness under his watch and care is both moving and inspiring. He tenderly tries to understand what her incoherent speech is saying, he does all in his power to make sure her life in this aggressively diminishing illness has many moments of joy. He is her north star as she wordlessly starts to leave her body and mind. Perhaps the most tender is when they drive silently together, her looking out the window, only able to say, Its so beautiful. This is a book of the tremendous dignity in our responsibility one to the other and the tremendous poetry in leaving no one behind.Gay Walley, author of The Waw and the Venus As She Ages collection. Still Phyllis is an honest portrayal of what a family experiences in caring for a loved one with CJD or other neurodegenerative illness. It balances the heartbreaking and grinding reality of caring for a person while the disease rapidly steals everything from them, with the beautiful moments when we are able to help give them their best day, when we can help them feel like themselves by surrounding them with the people, places, foods, and experiences that they have loved so well.Debbie Yobs, president/executive director, CJD Foundation Donald Friedman's narrative about his sisters final months of fighting a rare degenerative brain disorder, is an inspiring example of how to care for a loved one in cognitive decline with respect and sensitivityhonoring their freedom, dignity and sense of self.Carrie Seidman, Sarasota Herald-Tribune opinion columnist and founder of the FACEing Mental Illness project and podcast
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