Ronald Reagan’s daughter writes with a moving openness about losing her
father to Alzheimer’s disease. The simplicity with which she reveals
the intensity, the rush, the flow of her feelings encompasses all the
surprises and complexities that ambush us when death gradually,
unstoppably invades life.
In The Long Goodbye, Patti
Davis describes losing her father to Alzheimer’s disease, saying
goodbye in stages, helpless against the onslaught of a disease that
steals what is most precious–a person’s memory. “Alzheimer’s,” she
writes, “snips away at the threads, a slow unraveling, a steady
retreat; as a witness all you can do is watch, cry, and whisper a soft
stream of goodbyes.”
She writes of needing to be reunited at
forty-two with her mother (“she had wept as much as I over our long,
embittered war”), of regaining what they had spent decades demolishing;
a truce was necessary to bring together a splintered family, a few
weeks before her father released his letter telling the country and the
world of his illness . . .
The author delves into her memories to touch her father again, to hear his voice, to keep alive the years she had with him.
She writes as if past and present were coming together, of her
memories as a child, holding her father’ s hand, and as a young woman
whose hand is being given away in marriage by her father . . . of her
father teaching her to ride a bicycle, of the moment when he let her go
and she went off on her own . . . of his teaching her the difference
between a hawk and a buzzard . . . of the family summer vacations at a
rented beach house–each of them tan, her father looking like the
athlete he was, with a swimmer’s broad shoulders and lean torso. . . .
She writes of how her father never resisted solitude, in fact was born
for it, of that strange reserve that made people reach for him. . . .
She recalls him sitting at his desk, writing, staring out the window . .
. and she writes about the toll of the disease itself, the look in her
father’s eyes, and her efforts to reel him back to her.
Moving . . . honest . . . an illuminating portrait of grief, of a man, a disease, and a woman and her father.
THIS
COPY INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR !
I 100% unconditionally guarantee the authenticity of
the signature forever.
Please bid with confidence.
Provenance:
This item is from the Estate
of noted celebrity florist and decorator David Jones. Jones, a
Hollywood florist who for 50 years adorned the grand social affairs of a roster
of famous clients that included Eleanor Roosevelt, Mamie Eisenhower, Jacqueline
Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson, as well as the Reagans, Paleys
and Bloomingdales.
During his early years in
New York, he worked at the homes of Mrs. Roosevelt; William S. Paley, the chief
executive of CBS, and his wife, Barbara; and the banking heir Paul Mellon and
his wife, Rachel. In the late 50’s and 60’s he made some of his first visits to
the White House, becoming a favorite of Mrs. Eisenhower and Mrs. Kennedy.
It was Nancy Reagan who
gave Mr. Jones entree to the social elite at the other end of the country, he
told interviewers. She had just retired from acting when Mr. Jones moved to a shop
on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood in 1963.
Mrs. Reagan was taken by
his designs. He was known for his English country-cottage-style flower
arrangements — a gauzy romantic look that often incorporated flowers and plants
from his clients’ own gardens, especially roses, dahlias and potted citrus and
fig trees.
His client list grew to
include Mary and Jack Benny, Betsy and Alfred Bloomingdale, Walter and Leonore
Annenberg, Joan Crawford, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, James Garner, Audrey
Hepburn, Zubin Mehta, Liam Neeson, Joan Rivers, Barbara Stanwyck and David
Geffen.
Given his close
association with the Reagans and many other social elites, he accumulated
many signed books over the years some of which we will sell here.
Please email any questions
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JB012516