Us Two Together

"Words are like bricks." This is how the author's fifty-eight-year-old father defined his losing battle with primary progressive aphasia (PPA)--a rare form of dementia that advanced slowly and ultimately ended his days as an engaged university professor, leaving him unable to speak or to coordinate his thoughts and actions. In this beautifully illustrated graphic novel, artist Ephameron narrates her father's slow descent into early-onset dementia, layering sequential images under text to depict her father's decline and her family's experience caring for him.

The paper collage illustrations present visual snapshots of how Ephameron's father and family were affected by the illness; the text inscribes words and sentences her father managed to communicate when he was ill, along with Ephameron's own narrative observations pulled from her memories and her journal. Image, rhythm, and text work together to express human emotion and to frame illness in its context. Us Two Together is a poetic and melancholic depiction of how dementia quietly robs the body of its soul. In the end, Ephameron avoids closure, choosing not to acknowledge the fact that she was losing her father, who passed away only a few weeks after the publication of the original Dutch-language edition.