The tone of the books was an important element to achieve so that the books would not overwhelm nor be unrealistic to the grief experienced by a caregiver. I decided to use a visual metaphor which would be carried out across the two books to accommodate the variety of experiences expressed in the stories and create a sense of calm rather than exacerbate the highly emotional experiences already expressed in the stories.
After testing a number of ideas to see if they reflected the tone I was searching for, I decided on the visual metaphor of the moon. This metaphor was expressed mostly in terms of its ever-changing appearance. The phases of the moon, in which slithers of its surface are lit up or recede into darkness, expressed the experience of watching a loved one come in and out of states of lucidness.
Each night when you see the moon it appears slightly different, waxing or waning, yet these changes are invisible to the naked eye each night. Happening so slowly you can hardly tell what’s missing. Much like the way Alzheimer’s affects an individual, slowly and not in a linear fashion. There are times when it feels like only a sliver of light of who you once knew remains. Sometimes it seems like you can’t see them at all, yet they are always there only hidden in the darkness which is Alzheimer’s.
