“My mother suffered from Alzheimer's disease in the early 1980s. I finally had to admit her to a nursing home. Whenever I returned from my visits, I needed to write about her, about her body, her words, the place where she was. I did not know that this period would lead me to his death, in 1986. »
"I'm not out of my night" are the last words written by Annie Ernaux's mother. They contain all the pain of a woman at the beginning of her illness and symbolize the long and painful journey that is announced for the Alzheimer patient and his family.
«By making these pages public, I reveal them as they were written, the result of the stupor and disorder that I felt then. I did not want to modify anything by transcribing those moments when I stayed with her, outside of time, of all thoughts. I had stopped being the woman I had known, who watched over my life, and yet, under that inhuman face, by her voice, her gestures, her laughter, she was my mother, more than ever. »