Reviewed by Melissa Suggitt

A daughter’s grief, a mother’s fading memory, and a chorus of teddy bears that refuse to let the silence win – If I Could Remember is as heartbreaking as it is unexpectedly tender.

Donna Costa’s If I Could Remember is the kind of memoir that doesn’t just open a window into one family’s struggle with Alzheimer’s—it rips the curtains down, lets the cold air in, and forces you to sit in it. It is at once brutal and tender, blending memoir, fable, and medical fact into a tapestry that feels both unflinchingly real and strangely magical.

The book begins with diagnosis, a moment rendered with the rawness of a battlefield. Costa’s mother sits in a sterile room, subjected to the indignities of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. When told she can no longer drive, her grief is immediate, visceral: “Please, please, don’t take my license! Not that!” The plea isn’t about a car; it’s about independence, dignity, and the right to exist on one’s own terms. In passages like these, Costa captures how loss arrives in increments, each one as devastating as the last.

But this isn’t just a medical memoir. It’s also a book where teddy bears come alive, carrying the weight of metaphor and memory. Her mother, a prolific bear-maker, left behind hundreds of handmade teddies, each stitched with care. In Costa’s hands, they become companions and narrators, voices in the dark when the human ones falter. They bicker, console, and even confront Alzheimer’s themselves. In one whimsical yet piercing exchange, when a bear struggles to recall the past, another responds simply: “If I could remember, I would.” That refrain becomes the book’s heartbeat. Childlike in its phrasing, but devastating in what it suggests about memory’s fragility.

Woven among these intimate vignettes are passages of research and cultural reflection. Costa details the science of neurons and tangles, the statistics of diagnosis, and the stigma faced by both patients and caregivers. Yet she balances the clinical with the lyrical, moving seamlessly from “amyloid plaques” to a story of her Polish grandmother bootlegging whiskey with bottles strapped to her legs. The juxtaposition works because Costa understands that identity—personal, familial, cultural—is never just one thing.

The writing itself is sharp-edged but warm. Costa does not smooth over the humiliation, the anger, or the expletives that slip from her mother’s lips in moments of fury. She honors those moments not to shock but to show the truth of decline, dignity tangled with rage, lucidity with confusion.

Readers are steeped in both heartbreak and resilience. We sit at the kitchen table when her mother forgets to set a place for her daughter. We meet Charlie and Harry, teddy bears whose friendship is tested by memory loss. We feel the cultural dissonance of heritage half-claimed, half-denied. Costa doesn’t give us a linear arc so much as a kaleidoscope of fragments, reflecting the way memory itself splinters.

If I Could Remember is ultimately about how we hold onto love when memory fails us. It is about daughters carrying their mothers, bears carrying their makers, and words carrying what can no longer be spoken. To read it is to be both gutted and comforted, to laugh through tears, and to feel deep in your bones the urgency of remembering while we still can.

Thank you for reading Melissa Suggitt’s book review of If I Could Remember by Donna Costa! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Reviewed by Lola Lee

A moving story of life and death, of mother and daughter

 This memoir is like an intimate portrait, a reflection of its beautiful cover. Sandra Tyler deals with accepting the frail person her mother has become in the emotional Night Garden of My Mother. 

Amidst Sandra’s worries in watching her mother lose herself to Dementia are her own struggles with the overwhelming responsibilities of her family and her writing career. She recognizes her mother’s physical and mental decline and the emotional and spiritual challenges that come with it, as the ravages of years and dementia steal away the independent and strong woman she once knew.

“My mother right up to her dying day, plunged fearlessly forward into life, in the way she’d plunge into the lake, into the cold October waters at the bay. It was this spirit that enabled her to live independently for so long, what would become, quite literally, the one thing still keeping her alive.”

This memoir adeptly balances the present and the past. Sandra constantly revisits memories, reflecting on the moments that shaped her and her mother, like the bittersweet meal they shared shortly before her father’s death. Through these, Tyler captures the mix of closeness and tension that defines so many mother-daughter relationships. The writer’s transparency in expressing her feelings, even when they may sound mean, makes the narrative feel authentic and raw.

As her mother’s mental and physical faculties decline, the roles invert: now Tyler has to take care of the woman who once cared for her. This is devastating for both of them—and for us.

When authorities take her mother’s driver’s license, a shift comes. A symbolic act that means the loss of her autonomy and independence. For her mother, this is a cruel blow, marking the beginning of her downfall. For Sandra, this would be a painful reminder that she is losing the essence of the person her mother was.

Despite the heft of these emotions, this story is full of love and care. While her mother’s decline advances, Sandra remains committed to being there for her. 

Night Garden of My Mother is about the enduring connection between mother and daughter, even in the face of death. The memoir’s themes of loss and acceptance resonate deeply, particularly for those who have experienced the grief of watching a loved one’s health deteriorate.

This is the type of memoir that makes you look inside yourself and around you at the relationships in your own family. Who couldn’t look inward with as poignant a life story as this? Readers will appreciate the moments of care within it and the discovery of meaning in the process of aging. This is a book that reminds us of the fleeting nature of life and the beauty of the moments that remain with us after they’re gone.

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