Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Mount Auburn: Chapters of Poetry & Prose | Page 8

Still Alice
Within this garden of graves, it is difficult to avoid con-
fronting one’s own mortality, even if trying to do so. The
monuments for those commemorated at Mount Auburn
are a reminder to all that life is short and time is fleeting.
In her debut novel, Lisa Genova, a Harvard-trained neu-
roscientist and best-selling author, tells the story of Alice
Howland, a 50-year old Harvard professor dealing with
early-onset Alzheimer’s. Those familiar with Cambridge
will recognize many of the locations used in the book,
including a few scenes that take place at Mount Auburn. “I
grew up in Waltham and lived in Belmont while writing
Still Alice. I passed Mount Auburn Cemetery every time I
drove into Cambridge or Boston, and I always thought it
looked beautiful from my car,” says Genova. “Still Alice gave
me the perfect excuse to actually park my car and look
around. I spent a lovely morning there in 2005, walking
the grounds, sitting in the shade of the trees, taking notes.”
Just after learning of her diagnosis, an emotional visit to her
family’s lot at Mount Auburn forces Alice to face the reality
of her own future.
by Lisa Genova (2007)
They continued in silence to her family’s plot. Their gravestones
were simple, like granite Brobdingnagian shoe boxes, and stood in
a discrete row under the branches of a purple-leaf beech tree. Anne
Lydia Daly, 1955-1972; Sarah Louise Daly, 1931-1972; Peter
Lucas Daly, 1932-2003. The low-branched beech tree towered
at least one hundred feet above them and wore beautiful, glossy
deep purplish green leaves in spring, summer, and fall. But now, in
January, its leafless, black branches cast long, distorted shadows on
her family’s graves, and it looked perfectly creepy. Any horror movie
director would love that tree in January.
John held her gloved hand as they stood under the tree. Neither
of them spoke. In the warmer months, they’d hear the sounds of
birds, sprinklers, grounds crew vehicles, and music from car radios.
Today, the cemetery was silent but for the distant tide of traffic
beyond the gates.
Her crying, explosive and anguished, would have seemed ap-
propriate to any stranger observing the scene—her dead parents
and sister buried in the ground, the darkening graveyard, the eerie
beech tree. To John, it must’ve come completely unexpected. She
hadn’t shed a single tear over her father’s death last February, and
the sorrow and loss she felt for her mother and sister had long been
tempered by time.
She pictured her own name on the matching headstone next
to Anne’s. She’d rather die than lose her mind. She looked up at
John, his eyes patient, waiting for an answer. How could she tell
him she had Alzheimer’s disease? He loved her mind. How could
he love her with this? She looked back at Anne’s name carved in
stone.
She’d rather die than tell him.
Photos by Mike Rocha
6 | Sweet Auburn