“The Theft of Memory: Losing My Father, One Day at a Time” by Jonathan Kozol; Crown (320 pages, $26)
Some readers may be surprised to learn that Jonathan Kozol, the educational activist who has written about poverty and race in “Savage Inequalities” and “Rachel and Her Children,” has now published a frequently heartwarming, often nostalgic memoir about his late father, Harry.
“The Theft of Memory” celebrates the bond between father and son in thoughtful, often beautiful prose, but Kozol also makes pointed comments about how the medical system serves, and sometimes fails to serve, people with Alzheimer’s disease and their families.
Both a neurologist and a psychiatrist, Harry Kozol (1906-2008) often helped patients sort out what part of their troubles had organic causes and which part were psychologically based. One day, at age 86, he confided in Jonathan that he had been having “brief attacks of interrupted consciousness.”
Two years later, a former student officially confirmed that Harry had Alzheimer’s. He continued to live in a Boston apartment with his wife until a fall led to hip surgery. An operation under anesthesia “seemed to have left its permanent result in an unmistakable reduction of his cognitive capacity,” Jonathan writes.
Unlike many Americans, the Kozols had resources to make Harry’s remaining years as comfortable and stimulating as possible. Jonathan hired private aides for Harry in his nursing home; as described in his memoir, he found some remarkable people. Later, after hearing many pleas from his father about coming home, and after thoughtful consideration and many discussions, Jonathan brought Harry back to the apartment he shared with his wife, Ruth (who also lived to 102, lucid until her final months).
However, cash in the bank did not insulate the Kozols from the pain of watching a brilliant, vital man deteriorate. Nor did it protect them from the occasional insults of the medical system.
Feeling disappointed about how his father was treated by several doctors, Kozol thought back to house calls he accompanied his father on many years ago. “I never felt (his doctors) gave him back in full, or even in small part, what he had given once unstintingly to people who had placed their trust in him.” Jonathan came to rely on his father’s caregivers - Julia, Silvia, Alejandro and a nurse he has dubbed “Lucinda” - to notice when Harry was having problems or something changed in him, and for their counsel about the decision to bring him home.
When Harry was hospitalized for an infection, Jonathan refused to sign a “do not resuscitate” order, which brought him into a low-grade conflict with Harry’s doctor. “The formulaic way” that doctors and others discussed the issue troubled him. “In some instances, moreover, I was given the uneasy feeling that the high-minded ethical positions they assumed on the point at which a person’s life no longer ought to be preserved might be an unconscious or only semiconscious way to reconcile professional integrity with the economics of the health care system….”
Jonathan believed that, as long as his father took even modest satisfaction in his daily life, “his doctor ought to be as diligent in coming up with good preventive and protective measures for my father, and without my being forced to beg for them, as pediatricians, for example, normally would do in treatment of a child who might suffer from a neurological impairment.”
As Harry declined, Jonathan partially satisfied his longing for connection by going through his father’s papers and files - a bonus for readers of this memoir. Harry treated playwright Eugene O’Neill, who became his friend; he interviewed Patty Hearst for a total of 16 hours and testified for the state at her trial; he also examined Albert DeSalvo, who confessed to the Boston Strangler killings.
About the Author
