Gravel Road Ahead by Sue Fagalde Lick

 

Although the title hints at what’s in store, readers may not be prepared for the heart-wrenching journey ahead. Sue Fagalde Lick knows this rocky terrain well after accompanying her husband of 25 years down the circuitous path of Alzheimer’s disease. In moving poems that range from darkly humorous to heart-breaking, she is unflinchingly honest in her chronicling of both the bitter and the sweet moments. For those traveling this road with a loved one, Lick’s a guide to be trusted, offering a lifeline of patience and forbearance gleaned from their journey. But there’s plenty of insight here for any couple growing older together—and a reminder of just what we sign on for when we repeat “I do.”

–Holly Hughes, editor of Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease

 

Lick’s poems are sensual and raw— dry-eyed and weeping. These narrative poems tell it as it is and don’t hold back. They reveal how Alzheimer’s devastates the spouse of the afflicted, and the husband who is losing his sense of self and tragically knows that he is. The progression of this brain enemy becomes a memoir-in-verse, a survivor’s tale and a love story. From the poem “Love Remains,” “I kiss you/when your mouth/ tastes like ice cream/ or spoiled eggs. …your words get stuck,/and you don’t know/who I am— because/you do know/I’m the one you kiss.

–Willa Schneberg, psychotherapist & recipient of the Oregon Book Award for In the Margins of the World.

 

A rich testament to the power of the human spirit and the patient love involved in living with and caring for a beloved partner who suffers from progressive dementia, Lick’s debut chapbook is filled with stark, realistic poems that paint an intimate portrait of loss, grief, and the ever-present need for courage. Even in this collection’s loneliest hours, still there is a pull toward hope, like a flower intrinsically bent toward light. Even when most hesitant, most lost and groping in the wilderness of identity, these poems expose a resilient heart and a rooted center. “I slide into your arms like a latch / falling into place.” Gravel Road Ahead gives us both wounds to suffer and strong arms to fall into.

–John Sibley Williams, author of As One Fire Consumes Another

 

Gravel Road is an emotionally-wrenching collection of brave, honest, straightforward narrative poems that describe how the poet dealt with her husband’s descent into the shadows of dementia. The book is unflinching, and often terribly sad, but there are grace notes too – the ocean below a nursing home in Memory Care sparkling “blue and silver in pale April sun,” or the startling moment in Alzheimer’s Activity when a yellow balloon floats around a roomful of patients and “Eyes bright, they catch it, / amazed, then send it off, a / bubble in the air.” In the end, Sue Fagalde Lick addresses the wives who one day will face what she has faced, and she offers them a glimmer of hope: “I staggered on. And so will you.”

–Tim Applegate, author of At the End of the Day and Fever Tree

 

“I reach for his fingers/dry-skinned and cold/and hold on as tight as I can.” From words of Sue Fagalde Lick’s first poem in her chapbook, Gravel Road Ahead.” Lick navigates a journey of hard of truths that have no happy ending. In intimate detail she travels the course of Alzheimer’s with her beloved late husband. These are courageous poems about pain and struggle, each line honest and heartfelt. “and you don’t know/who I am—but/you do know/I’m the one/you kiss.” These poems are a testament to the humanity of loss and love.

–Lara Gularte, author of Kissing the Bee

 

In this unflinching study of a marriage unraveled by Alzheimer’s Disease, Lick navigates the anguish of diagnosis through the penuries of loss that rewrite both speaker and reader. As we witness the intimacies of each stage of diminishment, what can’t be saved reveals what can’t ever be lost. Love is the centrifugal force through which this “Alzheimer’s wife” accepts and attends to the halving of her shared life. And as she travels to the brink of her known world to the other side of disappearance-then-death, her courage to keep going beyond where the pavement ends illuminates the path for the rest of us.

–Sage Cohen, author of Writing the Life Poetic and Fierce on the Page