Creative Lady celebrates the creative talents of my dear wife, Helen Tochen, through the multimedia and multi-disciplinary use of prose, poetry, photographs, and paintings. Helen has never spoken of her many accomplishments in her professional life, family life, or creative life.

Professional life and family life are readily observable to others, but the creative activities, even coming from a rich inner life, may be less apparent. I as author will showcase my wife’s talents both to honor her for the products of her achievement but also because her talents show the heights she has been able to reach and which are being lost.

The reason for the losses is her diagnosis of Alzheimer’s syndrome in December, 2016, eight full years ago. The reader will better appreciate the extent of the losses if I can describe the heights she reached before. Family grieves for her, friends grieve for her, and perhaps readers will experience sadness as well—too often people with Alzheimer’s disappear from public life and the progression of their illness is not well understood. I wish to honor Helen by talking about the heights she has reached, and thus how much greater the losses incurred.

The Table of Contents therefore starts out with a discussion of prior life, The Way We Were.

The second theme, Remember When, has five family members or friends reflecting on the journey of this special lady. The invited writers come from different parts of her life. Then there is a separate theme for each of her creative abilities, and those disciplines are discussed under that theme. The selections include music, both voice and piano, calligraphy, quilt-making, Ikebana, the verbal art of the bon mot, and finally and just recently abstract art painting.

I use personal essays and the reflections of others to highlight the personal stories of my wife, and lyrical poetry to explore the depths of feeling and the meanings and sorrows I attribute to her illness. There is always a modicum of upbeat feelings, because this lady is still kind, loving, focused on others not herself, capable of humor, gentle and caring—she still carries much of herself in these later days.

A close friend of many years said after reviewing and commenting on this manuscript, “Helen is finally getting her due.” Another old friend commented on the need to write this story for and about my wife, “Mark, your writing sustains you.”

Manik Batra

Voice