He, in turn, provided companionship and helped her as she became increasingly frail.īut when it becomes clear she can no longer maintain her role in their collaborative care, the family seeks professional help, only to encounter red tape, overworked health workers, overcrowded facilities and, often, more frustrations than solutions.īitter Medicine: A Graphic Memoir of Mental Illness, which won accolades including the City of Calgary W.O. She supported him as he struggled with schizophrenia. For nearly 40 years, Catherine and Olivier lived together. The family's ability to take care of one another had long depended on a delicate balance. Meanwhile, living on his own for the first time in decades, Olivier eats two bananas for dinner and stares absently at a broken television set, feeling lonely and guilty that he let his mother down.Ī drawing by Olivier Martini excerpted from The Unravelling. Between refusing to shower and protesting her move to a hospital, Catherine sobs as she worries about who will remind Olivier to take his pills.

The memoir, told through text by Clem and illustrations by Olivier, recounts their family's desperate scramble when their mother, Catherine, develops dementia. And with a growing number of families encountering this very scenario, they suggest, the need to address these questions is urgent. The answers are frightening, chaotic and heart-breaking, Clem and his brother Olivier Martini reveal in their new memoir,

'But what happens when that solution collapses? What happens when caregivers grow too old to provide care, or get ill and require care themselves?' The longer you work, the harder you work, the truer you work, the more it has to return.'The governments of this country, federal and provincial, have turned to family caregiving as the go-to solution for those struggling with mental illnesses,' Calgary author Clem Martini writes. Though you draw from it, it gives something back. After all, how long can anyone wrestle? But luckily, writing is a paradox as well. The upside is this - if it were only a wrestle, eventually you would tire. In the end, however, there are no rules and no policing body to enforce them, even if there were. It has an ancient and distinguished lineage, dating back at least as far as ancient Greek Civilization.

There exists a large body of advice regarding the writing of plays. One of the best and most useful things an individual can do to learn about playwriting is to read broadly and deeply. Everything one needs to know about playwriting and storytelling is exposed to plain view. I teach undergraduate and graduate playwriting, and in the instruction of these courses there are several core ideas I maintain.

A Revolta by Clem Martini