Head Case

"Head Case: My Father, Alzheimer's & Other Brainstorms is a memoir in fragments, a lyric experiment in the immediacy of grief. Written during the end stages of her father's Alzheimer's Disease, Head Case chronicles the visceral and often painful experience of a daughter watching her father disappear. In 2010, Orgera moved from Los Angeles to Florida with her then-husband to be near her parents as they navigated her father's early Alzheimer's diagnosis at age 52. During this time, she spent days with her father-painting, listening to music, taking walks, reading poems, sitting on the porch and later in the courtyard of his memory facility-and recording these moments while examining her own memories through the lens of narrative, mythology and religion, visual art, migraines, ghosts, poetry, and science-all to understand what it means to be a human unraveling. In the end, Head Case is both a deep lament for a well-loved man and an exploration of what it means to live a good life"--