the story of

shatter and fade

The first time I was given reason to suspect that something was wrong, I was sitting next to my mom on the couch in her therapist’s home office.

I had just moved back to Connecticut after a (very) brief stint living in San Francisco. I was planning to take some classes out there when, on the first day after moving in, my roommate’s recently adopted dog sank his teeth into the left side of my face.

My mom had been seeing her therapist intermittently for the better part of 10 years, which is to say that he knew her well. So when he mentioned during the session that he had noticed enough cognitive impairment in her to recommend seeing a neurologist, his suggestion carried considerable weight.

It was a quiet drive home from the appointment. 

A few weeks later, my grandparents and uncle took her to the appointment where her physicians performed a lumbar puncture to collect a sample of her spinal fluid for testing. We received the results we dreadfully expected shortly afterwards: it was an unmistakable case of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. When my uncle passed along the official diagnosis I doubled over like I’d been punched in the stomach and fell to the ground. 

Of the many gifts life has bestowed upon me, having been born my mother’s son is surely my greatest fortune. She radiates an easy kindness that disarms even the most guarded of people. The simple, unwavering way she loves my brother and me cuts through the fog of life’s uncertainty, protects us in our most vulnerable moments, and heals us when we’re hurting. She is a steady, comforting presence in a chaotic world and the prospect of losing her was unbearable.

At the time, everyone in my family lived out of town. That is, everyone except for me, who, at 27 years of age, had spent the two months prior to the diagnosis lying in my childhood bedroom with the lights out and the curtains drawn. I watched and rewatched Friends as the lacerations in my face slowly closed, wondering what I was going to do with my life. I had tried my hand at a few different career paths but nothing stuck. I was either bad at, painfully uninterested in, or bitten in the face by each one of my attempts to find meaningful work. It was getting harder not to feel like a classic case of failure to launch.

But when we found out what was going on with my mom, I couldn’t have imagined being anywhere else. It became clear that the dog bite was much more of a blessing than a curse. We needed someone to be home with her while the rest of the family and I restructured the architecture of her life to better accommodate her new circumstances. 

Her physician informed us that other than taking certain medications whose efficacy was unclear at best, the only measurably productive treatment for Alzheimer’s was consistent exercise, a healthy diet, and an active social life. So we went for walks every day. We ate as well as my poor cooking and millennial ordering-in habits would allow. Her dedicated friends spent their valuable time organizing trips and activities. Sometimes we ignored the elephant in the room and other times mom would dig deep, accessing the terror in her heart to share how she truly felt. Once, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and whispered,

“I don’t want to slip away.”

Witnessing my mom grapple with the impossible reality of her situation inspires me every day. I’ve watched her process a unique form of grief and grow into someone who embraces her condition to the best of her ability. Though her cognition is severely limited, with the help of her family and friends, she lives a full and happy life.

The songs on Shatter and Fade are my attempt to make sense of the black hole that emerged in the universe after my mom’s diagnosis. They express my family’s desperation to repair what cannot be fixed. To make the best of a terrible situation. To accept that some wounds never heal, but the scars that form tell a beautiful, complicated story.

This album is dedicated to my strong, kind, brave, mom, Laura Rebecca Nierenberg Fishman, from the endless ocean of family and friends whose fervent love for you reflects the wonderful person you are.

Your son now and always,

Danny