“Memory is such a huge part of what defines us, and when it starts to ebb away, much of what we are goes with it,” writes Fiona Phillips early in Remember When. At 61 she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, the same disease that claimed both her parents.
Undertaking a memoir in those circumstances is an emotionally difficult project: reaching for memories as they recede, fixing them on the page before they vanish. She writes with the help of a ghostwriter and her husband, Martin, whose presence in the narrative grows as her illness progresses.
The illness’s effect (near memories vanishing first while the distant ones remain) shapes the book’s structure. Phillips recalls her childhood with clarity: her Narnie’s blue hair rinse, her open-toe shoes. Yet she can look out of the window and not remember the season, or lose a word halfway through a sentence.
The first part is straightforward: early life, sketches of her parents, a rebellious adolescence, first love, the bumpy road into journalism. Then come her years in Los Angeles, the flourishing of her career, marriage and motherhood, and the long, harrowing account of both parents’ descent into Alzheimer’s. She writes of the strain of balancing motherhood and work, and the toll it took on her marriage.
Throughout, her decency and emotional honesty shine. She does not flinch from harder truths: her son crying during an argument with Martin, or her embarrassment when her mother’s unzipped skirt fell in public. These painful moments are ones most of us prefer to forget; writing them requires courage.
The final section addresses her own diagnosis, which she first mistook for menopause. Here the book begins to fragment because of her mental deterioration during the time taken to write it. By January 2025, Martin writes: “She needs help showering and brushing her teeth. She can do these things physically, but is unable to think of how she should do them.” With no memory beyond a few seconds and no capacity to imagine the future, “She is just existing.” “I miss her,” he writes. “I miss my wife.”
Remember When is an unflinching, lucid account of Alzheimer’s and its devastation, not only on the person living with it, but on those who watch them disappear.