A Fade of Light by Nate Fakes

I low-key love that this is a book about the author's former stepfather. We all have so many important people in our lives over the years, and only a few of them are the big, "official" ones. Doing a book all about one of the "others" helps reclaim that larger world, helps remind us all we live in a big conglomeration of people, and that others are always affecting us and we them.

But it has to be low-key because it's not a happy book at its core: the title gives that away. A Fade of Light is about who Ron Malish was, and how he lost being that person to a rare form of dementia.

That sounds more reassuring than it might be: there are a lot of forms of dementia, and a lot of them are depressingly common. I've seen stats that half of all seniors die "with a dementia diagnosis" - not necessarily the cause of death, but in the mix by the end.

Nate Fakes wanted to tell Ron's story - or, more specifically, the story of what Ron meant to him, since that's the story that was his to tell. Ron came into his life in middle school, the way any step-parent does: first dating Fakes's mother, then marrying her a couple of years later. And Fakes makes it clear that Ron was at least somewhat annoying, as any new step-parent would be: trying hard, a little too hard, with a big personality and a crowd-pleasing manner, one of those people who can talk to anyone and usually does. (My own father was a slicker, more lawyerly version of the same type.)

Fakes, as he presents it here, had a little resentment, but mostly appreciation - Ron was a big personality, he dragged Fakes out to do fun things, and he was quirky and specific in mostly interesting ways. Most of Fade is about their relationship - Fakes growing up, wanting to become an artist, while Ron circles jobs of his own, with his obsession for self-improvement and make-it-big thinking.

Fakes handles that long central section well, balancing memoir-ish looks at this own life with his interactions with Ron as he grew up, moved away (and back), went to college, chased jobs - all of those things. Fakes never stoops to telling, but he shows how important people in our lives work: they support us, help us, surround us, as we go through whatever it is we're going through. We appreciate them, and they appreciate us.

But then, as Fakes signposted on the first pages, Ron got a dementia diagnosis a few years ago - it was something of a surprise, but Ron was more erratic and forgetful for a while before that, so it was clear something was the matter with him. It turned out to be Pick's Disease, an incurable form of frontotemporal dementia - Ron now lives in a care unit, and Fakes shows, by the end of Fade, that he's forgotten nearly everything.

Fakes draws this in a cartoonier style than the reader might expect for a "serious" memoir like this - but that's his style, that's how he draws. His people have big eyes and are shown larger and more central in panels than many similar "this sad thing" memoirs. Again, that's what makes Fade of Light specific and particular - this is who Fakes became, in part because he knew and was supported by Ron. He can tell this story this way because of everything that happened to him, and the art style and structure are baked into all of that.

This is a sad book, inevitably, but it's a celebration in its sad way. We can remember who people were and what they meant to us, even when they're gone. Or maybe I mean that we have to do that, that we have to hold onto the moments of happiness and celebrate them, even in the context of inevitable sadness.